The Ararat Scrolls

NEW SITE

2007-07-10T13:05:00.000-07:00

Please visit my new site:

http://araratscrolls.net/

I will keep all the old posts up here, at least for now. But they are also at the new site, in a much more navigable format.

New posts will be seen only at the new site.

If you have been so kind as to link to me, please change the link on your site.

Eco-Kashrut: Is it "Eco" and Kosher or is "Eco" the new Kosher?

2007-07-08T18:33:00.000-07:00

Saturday's Washington Post ran an article about the concept of eco-kashrut and growing interest in eating foods that are produced in a way that meets Jewish ethical standards, e.g., respectful of the environment, avoiding cruelty to animals, and with responsible labor standards--sustaining ourselves sustainably, as I like to say.

The story notes that:

the most dramatic expansion of eco-kosher principles is likely to come in the next few years as Conservative rabbis and congregations, which occupy the middle ground between Orthodox and Reform Judaism, create a new ethical standard for food production.

What remains unclear to me is whether its advocates think of eco-kashrut as an add-on to conventional kashrut ("eco" and kosher), or as an alternative to it (ecological responsibility as the new kosher). The WashPost notes that:

The Conservative seal of approval will not be based on traditional kosher requirements, such as separating meat from dairy products, avoiding pork and shellfish, and slaughtering animals with a sharp knife across the throat.

That sounds like eco-kosher as the new kosher to me. Yet just a bit later, the article quotes a rabbi as speaking of eco-kashrut as an add-on:

We do believe that most Jews, if given a choice between 'This item is kosher' and 'This item is kosher and also was produced by a company that respects its workers and the environment,' that most Jews will choose the latter.

Obviously, we are a long way from an agreed upon definition. But I would guess that the Jews who are most likely to be attracted to an "eco-kashrut" concept are progressive Jews, who just happen also those least likely to adhere to conventional kashrut. (According to the story, only about 15% of US Jews keep kosher.) If so, then doesn't a concept of eco-kashrut as alternative hold more promise?

Thanks to jewschool for the pointer and discussion.

Live Earth and Shabbat

2007-07-08T17:59:00.000-07:00

The following is excerpted from TreeHugger. It is posted from Israel by Karin Kloosterman, who notes she has "mixed feelings" about the Live Earth concerts:

today [6 July] there was a green expo and market at Rabin Square promoting organic food and clothing; ecological movies, shows for kids and a yoga workshop in Tel Aviv. And tomorrow from 6 to 11 pm will be a large screen set up at Rabin Square to broadcast the [Live Earth concert] event live from Channel 10. [...]

Why the mixed feelings? The concert is going to start broadcasting during the Sabbath. And in a way, the Sabbath in Israel offers a 24+ hour period reprieve for nature from man’s material demands. Observant Jews park their cars, turn off the electrical appliances, refrain from working, plowing the fields; and they give their animals rest too. Studies of air pollution levels in Israel decrease dramatically from the Friday night to sundown Saturday night, making us wonder why green groups throughout Israel don’t use Shabbat for their own environmental agenda?

Excellent question, Karin.

The full moon of Tammuz

2007-07-02T12:25:00.000-07:00

This was posted on Sunday and I confirmed that the photo appeared. Then it is gone for some reason. And when I try to edit the post to bring the photo back, stupid Blogger insists on changing the date of the post. Improvements (i.e. change of blogging software) coming soon...

Over one of the Washingtonia palms just in front of the house, at about 10:00 p.m. on Shabbat eve of 14 Tammuz, the full moon that marks the brightest 24-hour period due to its close proximity to the summer solstice.¹

The contrast between the bright moon and the otherwise dark sky is a bit of a challenge for my digital camera, but the effect nonetheless conveys just how bright the moon was. It is pretty much the only source of light in the photo, though there is some illumination from a light in the house and other lights visible along the canyon below.

As I discussed in the previous summer-solstice post, it is striking that of the four major seasonal sun-earth events, the summer solstice is the one at which there is no Jewish festival tied to the corresponding moon cycle.² In that entry, I suggested a reason for there not being one: unlike the other seasons, this time of year threatens few pagan-temptation problems for an ancient agricultural society's monotheism. There is, in a Mediterranean climate, almost no risk of major storms or other natural phenomena that might tempt the people to pay homage to pagan gods. And, while I am confident that the lack of such temptation is correct, I must say that I am puzzled by the references in the Book of Joshua, right near the striking passage about the sun standing still (10:12-13), to hail stones and to a flooded Jordan, the flow of which must be stopped in order for the people to cross. Both of these references imply a sudden storm, very much out of season for events that tradition claims happened around this time of year.³ (Biblical scholars, help me out here!)

As I noted, there are some modern efforts to establish a Jewish summer-solstice ritual (and some similar interest among some Christians as well; see links in previous entry). However, those efforts that I know of all place the proposed rituals on the solstice itself. Given the lunar timing of all the other holidays, such a proposal seems, well, pagan. Any such rituals (and I will leave to others what they might be) should occur or climax on the evening depicted here: the full moon of Tammuz, the period of maximum day and night light.

___
1. There are years in which the full moon closest to the summer solstice would be that of Sivan. Next year will be one such year, as was 2005.

2. That is, there is Chanukah, timed for the waning moon closest to the winter solstice; Pesach, timed for the full moon of spring; and the High Holy Days, which begin with the new moon closest to the autumnal equinox and continue through to the week-long festival of Sukkot, which begins with the full moon closest to the autumnal equinox. By occurring on Shabbat, the full moon of Tammuz joined Rosh Hashanah, Sukkot, and Chanukah, which all occurred on or began on Shabbat in 5767.

3. The battles depicted therein probably never happened at all. That's not the point. The book was written after the settlement in the Land of Israel to interpret the past in a way consistent with the now-settled national narrative. If it was intended to be understood that these events happened in summer, a hail storm and flooded river are rather out of context. The commentaries I have looked at do not address this, to my satisfaction, although there is perhaps a literature I have yet to locate.

East and West

2007-06-26T17:57:00.000-07:00

Just over three months ago, when musing about the states created by the post-WW II partition of British India, I asked why India succeeded, and...

Why not Pakistan? It is almost self-evident that East and West were not going to be viable in one state (lesson for Gaza and the West Bank?)

(But, I wondered, why has even post-second-partition Pakistan been essentially a failed state?) Little could I have imagined just how soon after those remarks Palestine would degenerate into its own separate statelets of East and West.

I have never been convinced that the "two-state solution" was viable. How many states with swaths of another state's territory between its parts have been viable? The US (with Canada separating Alaska and the rest). Not too many others. There is Russia's Kaliningrad, which, from what little I know, is pretty much a failed society. Cabinda has a separatist movement vis-a-vis the rest of Angola. These sorts of arrangements are bound to be difficult at best, if relations with the state between the two separate components are not good. And, even if the two-state solution were implemented tomorrow, mistrust between Israel and Palestine would not go away soon.

The events of the last weeks certainly have not shaken me of the view of non-viability. Which is not to say that I have a better solution. Occupation forever? One state? Three states? Gaza and the West Bank absorbed into neighboring Arab states? None of these looks too likely to succeed, either.

Summer Solstice

2007-06-21T13:51:00.001-07:00

The summer solstice is here, at least for those of us in the northern hemisphere. We Jews have festivals for three of the four major sun-earth events of the year (Chanukah near the winter solstice, Pesach around the vernal equinox, and Rosh Hashanah around the autumnal equinox). I have been thinking about why we don't have one for the summer solstice.

The summer solstice for many centuries has been marked by various pagan festivals. However, there is no holiday on the Jewish calendar to mark the summer solstice, despite the obvious fact that other holidays like Chanukah and Passover are built on the backs of pre-Jewish pagan celebrations (as are Christmas and Easter, too). Nonetheless, as the OC Register (not my favorite paper, but whatever) article just linked notes:

some modern Judeo-Christian groups are reviving solstice worship. [Let's assume the writer intended that to be taken as not worship of the solstice but worship on it.--ed]

"Many of those who grew up in Jewish and Christian religion want to see the modern holidays in their agrarian origin," Lucas said. [Amein--ed] "These green Jews and green Christians are incorporating the solstice into their current practices." [Hey, Green Jew, that's me!--ed]

Some religious groups point to biblical passages that may have occurred on the summer solstice, including the verse in Joshua 10:12 in which Joshua stops the sun in the sky. (The term solstice is actually from two Latin words meaning "sun stands still.")

"There is also a legend that Adam and Eve were cast out of the Garden of Eden on the summer solstice," said Rabbi Jill Hammer, director and cofounder of Tel Shemesh, a Jewish organization focused on the celebration of nature. "In the Jewish tradition, the summer is always about this trade-off: abundance but also danger. The summer is about exile and sorrow and loss."

Tel Shemesh offers a description of its summer-solstice ritual. As for the Joshua 10 reference above--and which my previous post was about--it refers to the narrative of the battles for the conquest of Canaan (as re-told well after the events). Often ancient battles stopped at nightfall (night-vision technology being rather primitive back then); might the battle have taken place at the summer solstice?

"Joshua Commanding the Sun to Stand Still" by Gustave Dore, (d. 1883) (courtesy Wikipedia.)

Some tradition says the battle was on 3 Tammuz. While we can't possibly know (even if the battle itself ever occurred, for that matter), if it did occur on 3 Tammuz, the impending night after the standing still of the sun indeed would have been very dark (being just days past the new moon).

Of course, each of the solar seasonal transitions (equinoxes and solstices) marks an important transitional point for the grower of deciduous fruit trees in a Mediterranean climate (such as the Land of Israel or southern California). At the winter solstice, the trees are in their deepest dormancy, while at the vernal equinox most of them are blooming or have just set their fruit. Now, at the summer solstice, we are approaching peak season for the fruit of the deciduous trees.

The "production cycle" for the deciduous fruits and other crops may have much to do with why there is no Jewish holiday tradition at this time of year. Unlike in the winter and spring, there are few natural forces that seem to contend with one another in "battles," the outcome of which will determine the farmer's bounty for the coming harvest (completed shortly after the autumnal equinox, at which we have Sukkot!). In the winter, we worry about warm days preventing good flower-bud set and about not having enough rain. In spring we worry about too much rain, or early heat and drying winds. For an ancient people being slowly weaned off polythesim, each of these battles was a temptation to stray and "bow before other gods" (paying homage to the god of rain or the god of sun, or whoever.)

Here at the summer solstice--the tension between "abundance but also danger" notwithstanding--we have the bounty of sunlight, the warm days and calm nights, almost no threat of major storms (in Mediterranean climates), and thus little to threaten the fruit.

Summer thus offers few temptations by those other gods, but plenty for which to give thanks to the One.

___

Source note:

The connection between agriculture, mono- vs. poly-theism, and the Jewish festivals is developed in a terrific book by Nogah Hareuveni, Nature in our Biblical Heritage (Kiryat Ono, Israel: Neot Kedumim, 1980). There is nothing in that book about the summer solstice, however, because of there being no significant Jewish tradition about this solar event. There is an interesting discussion about Tu B'Av, however, but one thing at at time! That's not till next month.

Much of this post is cross-posted at my other blog, which means I am getting less and less serious about this semi-anonymity thing.

Atheist siddur?

2007-06-21T13:51:00.000-07:00

Wait, that's an oxymoron, right? Excerpts and very lively discussion at Jewschool.

My favorite from the comment thread: When someone appeared to suggest this would be as bad as adding "imahot and Jesus" to the Amidah, and someone else asked if that commenter really meant to equate imahot and Jesus, Amit said:

sounds good to me: “magen avraham, poqed sarah, vetzolev yeshua”

I must admit that I needed to go to the dictionary to check out what a couple of those key words meant, but after doing so, I thoroughly second Radical Cleric's follow-on:

That’s fantastic. I love it. Anyone who doesn’t know Hebrew, this phrase is so funny it should make you want to learn it. ‘Schoiach to Amit.

I think I am going to have to make a point of keeping up with Amit's blog.

One moon, but never standing still

2007-06-15T17:10:00.000-07:00

It's the 29th of Sivan. And that means I have completed my first moon cycle as a Jew!

It also means that Rosh Chodesh Tammuz is just two days away. Tammuz, the month in which the summer solstice will occur, and the time for reading the book of Joshua and its stories of the conquest of the Promised Land:

12 Then spoke Joshua to HaShem in the day when HaShem delivered up the Amorites before the children of Israel; and he said in the sight of Israel: 'Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon; and thou, Moon, in the valley of Aijalon.'

13 And the sun stood still, and the moon stayed, until the nation had avenged themselves of their enemies. Is not this written in the book of Jashar? And the sun stayed in the midst of heaven, and hasted not to go down about a whole day.

The last month has been above average on the "busy" scale, with hardly time to stand still and reflect. But the summer is ahead, and in less than a week we will enjoy the extra light of the longest day of the year, when the sun stands still for us, even if just for just a moment.

Speaking of light--Shabbat Shalom!

Professor Finkelstein's tenure case

2007-06-12T12:15:00.000-07:00

Norman G. Finkelstein, a political science professor at De Paul University, was denied tenure by a vote of his university's campuswide committee on promotions. On the department's website, he is defined as a scholar of "theory of Zionism, the Israel-Palestine conflict, and the Nazi holocaust."

Finkelstein has received considerable attention for a book, published by the University of California Press in 2005, Beyond Chutzpah: On the misuse of anti-Semitism and the abuse of history. The book has generated considerable controversy (putting it mildly). I have not read the book or a review of it, but from various news stories I am aware of the spat he got into with Alan Dershowitz over this book and some of his other work. Dershowitz reportedly wrote a letter to DePaul against Finkelstein's tenure. Now, I am normally quite ready to back anyone who gets into a spitting war with Dershowitz. But is Finkelstein's academic career really falling victim of his own controversial views?

Finkelstein and his supporters allege that he was denied because of the views he has articulated in the book and other published items. If that is the case, it would be a bad day for academic freedom. However, is it the case? I know little about the standards for tenure at DePaul. The university is not really "on the map" for political science. I know of one study that lists the top 200 political science departments in the world (using a methodology that I consider the best of the many rankings out there). DePaul does not make the list. So the standards for tenure in political science at DePaul presumably are a bit lower than in the circles I am more familiar with. Still, when I downloaded his curriculum vitae from his academic site, I was rather surprised. The man received his Ph.D. in 1988 (from Princeton), the same year as yours truly. Nineteen years is a very long time from Ph.D. to tenure, had it been granted. (I was awarded tenure in 1995, a bit earlier than average, but not by a lot.) It is also a long time to have had only two books published by a university press (besides Beyond Chutzpah with UC, there was The Rise and Fall of Palestine: A Personal Account of the Intifadah Years, published by University of Minnesota Press in 1996) and apparently no articles in academic journals. I also note that Finkelstein lists Noam Chomsky (who is not a political scientist) as one of his two references. The other is Avi Shlaim, whom I had not heard of before, but who is a historian of the Arab-Israeli conflict and is at Oxford. Nothing inherently wrong with these references--the lightning-rod nature of Chomsky notwithstanding--but when one is seeking employment or promotion in an academic field, one normally has references within the discipline.

In short, while I can't pretend to offer judgment on the justification, yet alone the motives, of this tenure denial, a quick glance at his record does not exactly allow us to reject the hypothesis that the decision had to do with his academic productivity and impact on the discipline of political science.

Why Jewish: The Left-Libertarian (or Green) Connection

2007-06-11T16:11:00.000-07:00

The following is a continuation of the posting of excerpts, somewhat revised, from the various essays I wrote in preparation for my conversion. (The link in the first paragraph refers to one previous post in the series.)

So, here I am, binding my life to that of the Jewish people. All of the experiences I have related so far about getting in touch with the traditions and history preceded any synagogue attendance, any classes, and even any significant reading about Judaism, let alone thought of conversion. And all of my experience in what is now just over one year since I first entered our synagogue, all the study and preparation, have reinforced at the intellectual, as well as emotional, level, what a correct decision this is. The more I learned, the more it was clear that Judaism was the right fit for the sometimes-amorphous worldview that I already held.

First, Judaism combines a commitment to the individual’s education and betterment while at the same time maintaining a strong attachment to communal well-being and responsibility. In politics I have always had a liberal outlook. Yet at the same time, I have always been dissatisfied with classical liberalism and a modern secular society that too often glorifies individual material pursuits with minimal regard for their impact on the larger community. Over the past year, at the same time that I have finally gone from being non-religious to Jewish-identified, I have also gone from a nonpartisan left outlook to formal Green party affiliation.

The Green parties worldwide are what we political scientists, ever deft at naming things, call “left-libertarian.” Libertarian means freedom for the individual from restrictions imposed by hierarchies of human creation—principally the state. Left means the promotion of social justice and egalitarianism through seeking limits on the pursuit of private profit and uplifting the weak in society.

What is too often neglected by leftists and libertarians alike is that one without the other inevitably leads to oppression. Libertarianism without egalitarianism means the freedom to pursue private gain even when it entails losing sight of the communitarian maxim that “we are all in this together.” Egalitarianism without libertarianism means toleration of an oppressive state that interferes with private life and stifles the individual human’s ability to innovate.

I firmly believe that, whatever the partisan political affiliation of any individual Jew, Judaism is fundamentally a coherent set of left-libertarian principles—probably the most coherent combination of these values ever devised. As summarized in words attributed to Rabbi Hillel: “If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am for myself alone, what am I? If not now, when?" Our Jewish traditions have entailed a remarkable relative lack of hierarchy, especially in the liberal streams of Judaism that go back at least to the time of the Pharisees. The only real hierarchy is that between God and humanity, and even that is tempered by the mutual responsibility of the covenant. We are commanded to look after the poor and the stranger in our midst—left principles—yet we are encouraged to develop our individuality and to make our own choices—libertarian principles. These are fundamentals of left-libertarian thinking. This connection between left-libertarian, or green, politics and Judaism is one that I hope to develop over time in action within both Green and Jewish organizational contexts, and perhaps one day in my academic research as a professional political scientist. The connection may not be original, but it is underdeveloped and underappreciated.

(Other reasons to be posted in the near future!)

Shavuot, 5767

2007-05-22T11:35:00.000-07:00

The following are the remarks I plan to give before our congregation on Shavuot, in honor of my conversion. (Some names have been suppressed in the interests of "semi-anonymity.") In the coming days and weeks I will also post some excerpts from the longer essay I wrote for my beit din and the exam for the Intro to Judaism course.

I have had an interest in Jewish culture and history for at least twenty years, but it was only in the past two years that my interests took the next step, through a spiritual awakening and ultimately to embracing God’s covenant with the Jewish People.

My interest in Jewish history and culture really blossomed after I began to travel to Eastern Europe for my professional research as a political scientist exploring the emergence of democracy after the oppression of Communism. The first of these trips was in 1992—the year my wife and I were married. In several subsequent visits I became especially fascinated with the collection of the Prague Jewish Museum, which had been assembled by the Nazis for their planned postwar museum of what they would call “the extinct race.” And, with the living Jewish communities in that part of the world being so small, there was little more than a “museum” quality to what I was experiencing.

Then in 2005, in the wake of the Orange Revolution, we traveled to Ukraine. We had talked about going to western Ukraine for years, to visit the city from which my wife's grandmother had emigrated in 1920. Days before our departure for Europe we had made a connection with Yale Strom, a klezmer musician and filmmaker, whose “Carpati” is a documentary about the life of a Jewish man in the small community in Berehovo. We were able to locate this man, Ze’ev. He took us into his beautiful small shul, still active for a very small community. Ze’ev recited a prayer for us. He spent much of the morning with us, telling us about his life, how he avoided being selected by Mengele at Auschwitz, and how he struggles to hold on to the tradition of such a small community today. When we came out of the shul, I said to my wife, I just had a religious experience. This man not only survived, he lived to continue praising God right in the land where Hitler and then Stalin tried to root out all aspects of Judaism.

More than a week later, on the flight back from Ukraine, we found ourselves seated amidst a group of young Jewish American women returning from a summer camp at which they teach young Ukrainian Jews to reconnect with their own traditions. Was this a sign? Flying high above Eastern Europe on one of the bumpiest flights I have ever experienced, surrounded by Jews keeping Judaism alive right in the heart of a land populated by Jews at least as far back as the 10th century conversion by the Khazar emperor and many of his subjects, yet nearly made Judenrein in the very lifetime of our parents. These experiences really drove home to me just how important it is to preserve and grow these Jewish communities of Eastern Europe: Only by Jews’ presence can God’s message of redemption for all humanity be heard in our time, right in the heart of the land where Hitler tried to snuff it out.

Upon returning home, I was determined to begin a process of exploring more seriously how I could connect with the traditions I had just witnessed reemerging in a democratic Eastern Europe from the ashes of Nazism and the darkness of Communism.

There were times during this journey when I thought I had come in “backwards”—that my interest in culture and history before faith and observance was the wrong sequence. But over time I have become increasingly confident that it is precisely the right way to do it. For what is conversion in Judaism? It is not merely the acceptance of a set of religious and theological principles. In fact, it is scarcely that at all. More fundamentally, it is the mutual embrace of the seeker and the community; it is the joining of an intergenerational covenant with a people and that people’s God. On Shavuot we read the Book of Ruth, which includes the following passage:

For wherever you go, I will go; wherever you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God my God.

The sequence is significant: joining a community, accepting that community’s God. I have felt increasingly closer to the Jewish People for some time. Now I embrace the God of the Jewish People, making my entry into the Covenant formal today, on Shavuot, as we commemorate the receiving of the Torah. I do not know where this journey will take me from here, but already Judaism has given me a new perspective on several principles and practices that motivate the secular side of my life. I will give a couple of examples of how the Jewish concept of Tikkun Olam gives new meaning to causes I adhere to.

I have already mentioned that I am a political scientist by trade. I am also an organic grower on a small commercial scale; I have brought some of the bounty of the field to the Temple today, although it is fruit of the trees and not wheat. Like Judaism, the organic movement is all about making distinctions in basic activities like producing and consuming food. While I do not find the discipline of conventional kashrut relevant to my own life, I am exploring the emerging concept of eco-kashrut and its connection to organic agriculture. Modern urban, consumer society has become too detached from food production to recognize fully the extent to which one of the core aspects Judaism is to teach us to understand the Source of our sustenance—as reflected in an alternate name given in the Torah for today’s holiday, Chag HaKatzir, the early summer harvest festival. As Jews we are called to accept the responsibility that we not only sustain ourselves, but that we sustain ourselves sustainably. Organic agriculture is about ensuring that we minimize the impact on the environment in producing our food. Eco-kashrut offers a synthesis between good agricultural practice—something the Torah is deeply imbued with, in the context of the knowledge of its times—and modern Jewish living.

Returning to my political science side, I hope to enlist progressive Jews in a form of social action that might seem very distant or even irrelevant to most people hearing this—electoral reform to deepen democracy. We Jews have the most “democratic” of the major religious communities, yet too many major American Jewish organizations are oligarchic in practice and, for my taste, too closely tied to the secular and moneyed political power-brokers. This results in their being too distant from the real responsibilities of fulfilling God’s covenant to bring about peace among the nations and to take care of all Creation.

Fairer elections—right here in our own country as much as in Poland, Ukraine, or anywhere else—are an absolute necessity to open up channels of representation for all of us who otherwise end up submitting to oppressive hierarchies and being led into needless wars and environmental destruction. Without deepening democracy, there will be no sustainable peace in our world and ultimately no sustainability of creation itself. Thus democratic electoral reform is at the core of our responsibility for Tikkun Olam.

So what does being an observant Jew mean to me? It means keeping an eye out for acts committed in my name that harm humanity or the environment—“let them be for frontlets between your eyes.” And it means, taking corrective action—“bind them as a sign upon your hand.” This is how we work to bring closer the day when, as the prophet Micah foretells, the nations shall beat their spears into pruning hooks, so that all may sit under their vine or under their fig tree, and none shall make them afraid.

Ken yehi ratzon.

Your computer is treif!

2007-05-20T16:49:00.000-07:00

Must be clicked on to be believed.

Mars is safe

2007-05-20T16:41:00.000-07:00

Mars chocolate, that is. The company has reversed an earlier plan to begin using an animal product in the manufacture of its candies, after entreaties from British vegetarians and the Israeli rabbinate.

I am a Jew

2007-05-18T14:22:00.000-07:00

Yes, it is official! As of a few hours before sundown on 29 Iyar, I emerged from the mikveh as a new Jew.

These last weeks have been exciting and very full, but above all fulfilling. I have not had much time or energy for blogging. But much more is to come in this space soon!

Our Ararat

2007-04-24T17:24:00.000-07:00

"My" Ararat is an insignificant scrub-studded hill. But "Our Ararat" refers to an Armenian statement of resistance and remembrance: "In Yerevan, locals can gaze at Mount Ararat but can’t go there."

Today marks the 92d anniversary of the execution of the Young Turk's final solution against the Armenians.

Never forget.

Today also is, of course, Israeli Independence Day. Rejoice! And remember, for today is also Al Nakba.

(Disclaimer: A link here does not necessarily constitute agreement with the statements at the linked site. Just an effort at contextualizing!)

It's all the Reformers' fault

2007-04-19T10:21:00.000-07:00

Former Chief Sephardic Rabbi of Israel, Mordechai Eliyahu, at this year's Yom HaShoah events:

The Reformers started in Germany,... Those redactors of the Jewish faith began in Germany. We learn from this that it is forbidden to attempt to change Judaism. [...]

It is not a coincidence that the Holocaust began in Germany... Whenever Jews try to act like goyim they are punished. It happened during the Spanish Inquisition and it happened during the Holocaust.

Amazing that one of the supposed leaders of the Jewish community could even imagine such a connection.

Seasonal convergences of Aviv

2007-04-02T17:36:00.001-07:00

It has been some year--as I have noted frequently--with seasonal convergences such as Rosh Hashanah on the autumnal equinox, the winter solstice occurring during Chanukah, a full lunar eclipse on Purim, and the first days of Rosh Hashanah, Sukkot, and Chanukah all falling on Shabbat.

But now we have the most religiously significant convergence of them all. For most teams, Opening Day and Pesach coincide. Spring must be here.

PLAY BALL!!!

Grains of truth

2007-04-01T13:38:00.001-07:00

OK, so I am back after all, and Pesach has not even started...

Are oats to be considered chametz, grains not to be consumed if leavened (e.g. by fermentation) on Pesach?

I started with Wikipedia, even though I always take what I read there with a grain of salt.

The Torah (Exodus 13:3) prohibits Jews from eating leaven (chametz) during Passover. Technically, chametz is only leaven made from the "five grains": wheat, spelt, barley, shibbolet shu'al (two-rowed barley, according to Maimonides; oats according to Rashi) or rye...

Evidently we have some disagreement, going back a few years, about whether oats are prohibited. Searching some more (and thanking God for Google), I landed on a JTS document, Haggadah Shel Pesah (in PDF, and very interesting for more than this short quotation):

The five grains which can be used to make halah, and therefore can become
hamaiz and are prohibited on Passover are:

Hitim - wheat [Triticum durum and vulgare]
Se'orim - 6- and 4-rowed barley, [Hordeolum sativum and vulgare]
Kusmim - {Even Shoshan=Triticum dicoccum, J Cohen=spelt}emmer/lesser spelt/ rice wheat
[Triticum dicoccum]
Shibbolet Shu'al - {Even Shoshan=Avena; J Cohen=oats}2-rowed barley [Hordeolum distichum]
Shippon - {Even Shoshan=Secale=rye, JCohen=rye} spelt wheat [Triticum spelta].

These are the only items which can become hamaiz. While there is virtually total rabbinic agreement since Talmudic times that these Biblical Hebrew terms comprise the sum total of items which can become hamaiz, there is not agreement regarding the proper translation of the terms kusmim and shibbolet. Some authorities include oats in the above list but it is doubtful whether oats should be included. [my emphasis]

(This source also suggests that the inclusion of rye on the prohibited list, according to most authorities, is inaccurate.)

Kashrut.org agrees that oats do not belong on the list:

The Gemara says in Menachot 70a, and so it is brought down in the Halachah, that the five grains are either types of wheat or types of barley (two are wheat & three are barley). Oats does not fit in to this category. It is not a wheat nor is it a barley. Clearly some people went to great lengths to randomly translate each of the five grains into something in English without regard to the consequences. People are being restricted unnecessarily, and others are making a Bracha LeVatalah on Matzot made from Oats. One who uses oats for Matzah is absolutely not Yotzeh (accomplishing) the Mitzvah.

My oat granola will remain on the breakfast menu this Pesach.

Chag HaAviv

2007-03-28T15:49:00.001-07:00

Well, Chag HaAviv is almost here, and in the likely event that I don't get back here before it does (likely because of all the work I have backed up), I wish my legions of readers a happy one!

I like this line from Naf Hanau at The Jew and the Carrot, writing about the arrivals of spring and Leviticus:

More than any other work I’ve ever done, growing plants roots me in my Earth, my religion, and my seasons with a deep sense of purpose.

Indeed.

Does Pakistan have a right to exist?

2007-03-19T14:40:00.001-07:00

Continuing with an occasional theme here about the notion of a state's "right to exist," via The Moderate Voice I came across a summary of a new book called Divide Pakistan, by Syed Jamaluddin. In the first paragraph of the summary, the author says:

India's democratic strength for the last 59 years has proved that its existence was fully justified. On the contrary, Pakistan emerged as a failed state for one single reason that a country which was founded by assembling almost eight different nations in the name of Islam, was unable to justify its existence.

The post-partition fates of India and Pakistan are relevant for comparative analysis of the Israel-Palestine conflict, as both sets of states (or proposed states) came about through UN-mandated partition in the early post-WWII decolonization period. Of course, there are numerous differences between the two cases, and the differences may well be more significant than the parallels. Nonetheless, it is worth thinking about the India-Pakistan partition, for, as in the Israel-Palestine case, one of the post-partition states has been a successful multiethnic and multireligious democracy, while the other is a failed state (or a non-state, which is an even more dramatic degree of failure, I suppose).

However, Jamaluddin's premise is unsatisfactory, and for precisely the reason I just alluded to. India, like Pakistan (and more so than either Israel or, especially, Palestine) is itself an assemblage of numerous "nations" (including various Muslim groups). Yet it has worked. Why not Pakistan? It is almost self-evident that East and West were not going to be viable in one state (lesson for Gaza and the West Bank?), and indeed the former East Pakistan has existed as the separate state of Bangladesh now for more than 35 years (not with great success, though more so than for the remainder of Pakistan). As for the current state of Pakistan, only in hindsight is it "obvious" that Balochis and Sindhis (etc.) can't coexist in one state. Jamaluddin proposes that Pakistan be further partitioned into its eight component nations (as he identifies them). I have no idea whether that would be a good idea (independent of whether it is achievable), but I am not convinced that, at the time of partition, it was so obvious that Pakistan would fail and India would succeed as viable multiethnic states.

Reform support for Israeli movement

2007-03-15T18:45:00.000-07:00

From the JPost:

Leaders of Reform Judaism from around the world opened a conference in Jerusalem on Thursday whose agenda included a multimillion-dollar expansion of activities in Israel and a demand that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert take steps to officially recognize the movement and its conversions and rabbis.

The plan will include more than $100 million to support various activities of Israel's Reform movement, including

education and synagogue expansion, as well as elements that are not usually part of a religious movement's activities, such as investment in new Jewish art, providing religious services outside the synagogue, and social activism.

At a meeting with Olmert on Thursday morning at the Kirya military headquarters in Tel Aviv, the leaders demanded an end to "institutionalized discrimination" against Reform institutions and beliefs, particularly in the allocation of government funds and the recognition of conversions and rabbis, both in Israel and abroad.

As a strict separationist, I would prefer that no religious organizations receive state subsidies or "recognition." But if subsidies and official recognition are going to continue to go to Orthodox institutions (and they will), I suppose it is about time Reform got to feed at the government's pork trough, too.*

The state aside, this initiative strikes me as a very good thing. Just last Shabbat we had a young visitor from Israel to our shul. I spoke to him afterwards and one of the things he said really struck me. He was impressed by hearing music, seeing women at the bimah, and the participation in our service. He had never seen anything like it in Israel.

____
* Pardon the very non-kosher reference. What do they call the "pork barrel" in Israel, anyway?

Another time-wasting quiz

2007-03-15T18:41:00.000-07:00

Well, this is not nearly as interesting as the Belief-O-Matic (see left sidebar link, under the "Welcome"), even it if is also at Beliefnet. But it's hot today, I'm tired (blaming the time change for that), and I needed a time-waster, apparently.

What kind of Jew are you?

Well, I took it, notwithstanding that the really accurate answer would be none at all--yet. Formalities and institutional imprimaturs aside (and having to finesse a question or two that was not relevant to me), here is what the "quiz" said:

You are a Tzimmes Jew.
Like this Sabbath-evening fruit and sweet-potato side dish, your Jewish identity is highly traditional, even as it adapts with changing times. A basic recipe is supplemented with various individualistic flourishes. Judaism plays an integral role in your life, though your identity is not defined solely by it.

Yep, that's me: Traditional, adaptable, individualist!

Other possibilities, for comparison:

Lukshin Kugel Jew.
Like the traditional noodle kugel, your Jewish identity has withstood the test of time to remain relevant and meaningful to you. The kugel's recipe has been passed unchanged from generation to generation, like the Judaism you practice.

Haroseth Jew.
Like this Passover fruit and nut mixture, your Jewish identity can take any number of forms, each blending tradition and innovation. Your cultural and ethnic ties to Judaism are stronger than your religious ones. Your religiosity and Jewish identity often revolve around holidays, lifecycle events, and other special religious times are important to you.

Blueberry Bagel Jew.
Like this blend of Old World Jewish (the bagel) and New World secular (the blueberry flavor), your identity retains ties to its past, even as you have chosen to forge a new path.Your connection to Judaism is cultural, rather than religious, and your identity does not tend to center around Judaism.

Cute.

Right to exist and recognition

2007-03-12T17:20:00.001-07:00

German Chancellor Angela Merkel says that it is important to emphasize that Germany supports Israel and that protecting Israel's right to exist will continue to stand at the center of Germany's foreign policy. "I regret that I am forced to reiterate this repeatedly," the chancellor added.

Indeed, it is regrettable that she feels "forced" to reiterate this. But note the neat way in which she (or the Haaretz reporter who summarized her words at the annual European-Israel Dialogue held in Berlin this weekend) elides the question of "support for Israel" with "Israel's right to exist." These are regularly treated as one in the same. They are not.

The very phrase "right to exist" has long troubled me. Of course, every state should recognize every other state that has been admitted to the United Nations. But the idea of "right to exist" is beside the point. Is there any other nation--aside from the non-state of Palestine, that is--where the question of its "right to exist" ever comes up?

States, per se, do not have rights to exist. They simply exist. Like Israel and 190 other states, including several recently recognized states that were previously occupied by a neighboring state (Eritrea, Timor-Leste, Estonia, etc.). Or they do not. Like Palestine. (And Kurdistan and Somaliland, which function in many ways like states, but are not recognized as such.)

States are nothing more than organizations with hierarchical authority over some population living within a bounded territory. Some have more effective authority than others--Pakistan, for example, hardly has any authority over parts of its territory, and the same can be said for numerous other states in the developing world. And some states have never established an ultimate definition of the territory over which they seek to have hierarchical authority. Like Israel, for example.

Then there is, of course, the question of recognition. This is what it boils down to: Does one state recognize that the other exists, and exchange ambassadors with it? Mixing this up with questions of "rights" of a state to exist is a dead end. The Israeli state does not recognize a Palestinian state, and thus it is utterly pointless to expect the government of the non-state of Palestine to recognize the Israeli state, much less to recognize that it is "right" to exist.

Recognition will come--if ever--as the mutual recognition of two states, Israel and Palestine, with defined borders and with ambassadors in one another's capitals (Jerusalem for both?). In the mean time, always making it a question of "right" and requiring the Palestinian non-state to recognize the Israeli state as a precondition for even talking about everything else is nothing but a way to ensure the conflict will never be resolved.

Ghettos

2007-03-12T12:26:00.001-07:00

Actually, given that it's an Italian word, the plural would be ghetti, but I digress...

German Bishop Gregor Maria Hanke is taking a lot of flak for saying, after a visit to Yad Vashem:

In the morning, we see the photos of the inhuman Warsaw Ghetto, and this evening we travel to the ghetto in Ramallah; that makes you angry.

He has since apologized for the remark.

OK, so Ranallah is not the Warsaw Ghetto. Its residents were not rounded up from their homes and forced to live there, and they are not awaiting deportation to death camps. On the other hand, the Bishop did not say Ramallah is the Warsaw Ghetto. He did not even say that Ramallah is like the Warsaw Ghetto. He said it is a ghetto. Is he wrong?

Flowers of Gaza

2007-03-12T09:37:00.000-07:00

One does not normally think of flowers when thinking of Gaza. But as Brian Blum shows at This Normal Life, red anemone season is a spectacular time for a visit to the shadows of that troubled territory.

I am not sure I have mentioned This Normal Life before, but it is a most enjoyable blog about the experiences of an Jewish family from California that moved to Israel. Especially recommended are Brian's posts about traveling Jewcognito on a visit to Egypt and searching for a mikveh on a weekend getaway to the Dead Sea, and his sets of posts on living with terror and the war with Hezbollah.

Garry Kasparov

2007-03-11T12:22:00.001-07:00

Thanks to PoliBlog, I came across a fascinating account (in the NYT) of former chess champion Garry Kasparov's chairmanship of the United Civil Front, which promotes activism against the creeping authoritarianism of Putin's Russia.

The story is quite interesting in its own right, but what really caught my eye is a fact I did not know about Kasparov (not that I knew much at all about him): He is half Jewish, half Armenian.

Now that is an impressive bloodline--Jewish and Armenian, descendant of two persecuted and dispersed groups. And from Baku, Azerbaijan, which indeed once had large Jewish and Armenian populations. Actually, Baku still has a pretty substantial Jewish population--around seven thousand, fourth highest in the XSSR--but I am unsure how many Armenians remain since the conflict between the post-Soviet states of Armenia and Azerbaijan.

Assuming Wikipedia can be trusted with this sort of information, Kasparov was born Garry Vajnshtejn (the surname being Jewish, and a variant of Weinstein or Feinstein). His father died when he was young and he took his mother's name, the Armenian Kasparian (later Russified).

Fascinating. I wonder if his considerable celebrity in Russia trumps resentment over his ethnic background.

Lunar eclipses and Jewish holidays

2007-03-08T17:51:00.000-08:00

This Jewish year--my first of living a Jewish life--has been full of convergences of astronomical events with the holidays. The cosmic convergences began at the very head of the year, when the autumnal equinox and Rosh Hashanah coincided (which also happened to be the beginning of Ramadan). Then Chanukah coincided with the winter solstice. Of course, we also have had a year in which many of the holidays (starting with Rosh Hashanah and continuing with Sukkot, Chanukah, and Tu Bishvat) coincided with Shabbat. And now we have just had a lunar eclipse on Purim!

This sent me researching the frequency with which holidays and lunar eclipses might converge. As BZ noted at Mah Rabu (and at Jewschool), Purim may be the perfect holiday for a lunar eclipse:

The moon gets covered up (bad for the Jews [according to the Talmud, Sukkah 29a]), and then becomes visible again (good for the Jews!). This exactly parallels the structure of the book of Esther: during the first half, it appears as though the Jews are going to be annihilated. In the end, this ominous darkness is chased away, and everything works out ok: LaYehudim hayetah orah vesimchah! The Jews had light and joy!

So, how rare was this convergence? It was not easy to piece together the answer, but two terrific websites made it possible. The first was Hebcal, which allows you to generate a calendar of the overlay of Jewish holidays with any year on the Gregorian calendar. This allowed me to compare with dates of lunar eclipses throughout many centuries.

(It would have been so much easier if someone had a list of lunar eclipses according to the Hebrew calendar, but several pages deep into a Google search, nothing of the sort had turned up on-line.)

In any event, if I compared the two pages accurately, it looks to me like we last had a lunar eclipse on Purim in 1978. It looked like the list of lunar eclipses showed one in March, 1978, to be the night after Purim, but that presumably is not possible. So, I think this convergence happened in 1978. I am more confident that it happened in 1960 (which happens to be the year I was born, though not till fall). The next time appears to be in 2025. Mark your calendar!

So, it is a pretty rare occurrence. What about other holidays? Granted, for the reasons BZ gives, Purim may be the perfect holiday on which to have a lunar eclipse, but obviously we can't enjoy such coincidences very often.

Again, with the caveat that I am not claiming my results are definitive, relatively recent and upcoming convergences of lunar eclipses with holidays other than Purim appear to be as follows:

1967 Sukkot and Pesach
1968 Sukkot and Pesach
1986 Sukkot and Pesach
1990 Tu Bi-Shvat
1996 Sukkot and Pesach
2014 Sukkot and Pesach
2018 Tu Bi-Shvat

Well, I never would have guessed that Pesach or Sukkot would have this occur so often (if you call five times over about a sixty-year period "often"). And in consecutive years. Can that be right?

I also do not have sufficient understanding of the cosmic cycles to understand why every time there is a lunar eclipse on Sukkot, there is also one on Pesach of the same Jewish year. Obviously, these holidays occur at the full moons six months apart; from the table of eclipses, I could see that there are many years (by which I mean any 12-month period) when two eclipses occur six (lunar) months apart (including 2007). However, there are others with none (such as 2005 and 2006). My astronomy is not good enough to understand these patterns, or even to see a clear pattern. (I'm just a social scientist; in fact, despite a nearly lifelong fascination with the topic, an astronomy course was the source of my only C in college!)

The curse of Ararat Scrolls

2007-03-06T11:35:00.001-08:00

So, what is it about getting a link here at the Scrolls that leads to conversion, and I do not mean conversion to Judaism? I mean the conversion of a blog link to something entirely unrelated. Or, if not 'conversion', then prolonged silence, or various forms of blogging debacle?

In my list of blogs about Jews-by-choice, the link for Heading for Sinai now gets you to a blog that is all in Kanji (as best I can tell). The one for Masa ha-Ruach, which had some very fine discussion of a convert's experience, now redirects to something called Penguin Dust that does not exactly contain things I want to read. (I have now deleted these two links.)

Then there is Tikkun Ger, who had a server meltdown recently. Fortunately, he is back up and running strong, though some of his earlier posts (along with numerous stunningly thoughtful comments by yours truly) are now gone. A couple of the others in that section of my links have hardly updated since I linked to them (not that I update frequently myself) or have largely moved to other topics.

Then there is Baraita, a wonderful blog, but which has not updated since October 22, or just about the point at which I added the link.

Given the low readership here, a link has little upside (compared to, say, a link at Mah Rabu--thanks, BZ!). However, if you are linked here, beware!

C.E.

2007-02-25T17:33:00.000-08:00

I was looking up US government information on Daylight Savings Time (which starts much earlier, March 11, this year than ever before) and was pleasantly surprised: In its note on the history of hours, minutes, and seconds the government (NIST, to be specific) uses B.C.E. and C.E. instead of B.C./A.D.

Then I happened upon a new Christian right-wing alternative to Wikipedia called Conservapedia. In its mission statement it says:

Conservapedia is a much-needed alternative to Wikipedia, which is increasingly anti-Christian and anti-American. On Wikipedia, many of the dates are provided in the anti-Christian "C.E." instead of "A.D.", which Conservapedia uses. Christianity receives no credit for the great advances and discoveries it inspired, such as those of the Renaissance.

Oh, my! C.E. is anti-Christian (which evidently is the same thing as anti-American)? Perhaps non-Christian, but anti- ? Give me a break. Even by using C.E. we are acknowlegding that we share the same era with you, as defined by the arrival of your claimed Messiah. But why should we have to call it "the year of our lord," when that's not our Lord?

Not that these are the sort of people one can reason with...

But I really like the irony in this link from blogger Jon Swift:

For years homeschooled children have had to rely for all of their information on Wikipedia, which is full of dangerous ideas that homeschooling was supposed to prevent from seeping into the home. Now, finally, there is an alternative, which doesn't have any controversial ideas at all: Conservapedia. Conservapedia is based on good Christian values, unlike Wikipedia, which I gather from the name, is based on Wiccan.

Thanks to wmtc for the tip.

(I should note that wmtc stands for "we move to canada," a terrific blog by L-girl, who did just that. I have a yahoo.ca address for this blog, but that's the only part of me that is Canadian--at least so far!)

New version of Blogger

2007-02-16T15:45:00.001-08:00

I upgraded to the new version of Blogger. Among many nice new features is the ability to add labels to posts (indicating their topics). Among the not-so-nice features is that if you want to go back and add labels to old posts (which seemed like a good idea), it updates the time stamp. So your old posts become "new." I tried manually back-dating (when I could figure out what the original date might have been), but it does not work. The software insists on giving the new date and time.

So, now I have a post about "last week's" Haftarah for Sh'mot that is dated today. Ugh.

If any other bloggers happen upon this and know a solution, please drop a comment here. It would be really nice to be able to add labels to old posts (or, for that matter, correct errors I might catch in re-reading an old post) without the software treating it as new.

Jews from Iraq

2007-02-16T15:45:00.000-08:00

This morning on BBC World Service's Outlook program, there was a fascinating segment about Jews in Jerusalem who lived in Iraq until the 1950s. BBC's overview:

The creation of the Jewish state in 1948 brought an influx of immigrants from all over the world - from other parts of the Middle East as well as from war-scarred Europe. For all of them it was the culmination of a religious journey, the fulfilment of a dream to live in the promised land. But more than half a century on, how do those immigrants and their descendants feel? For Outlook, Lipika Pelham visited one community, the Iraqi Jews who arrived mainly in the 1950s, and settled in an area known as Mahane Yehuda in the heart of Jerusalem. It is a famous market with alleyways lined with grocery stores, still mostly owned by the descendants of the original Iraqi and Kurdish immigrants.

The program included interviews about a nuts-and-dried-apricots store run by one of the immigrants. (Why can't we have stores like that?) And tantalizing discussions about culinary traditions that they brought from Iraq. It also quotes one of the men as saying that before 1947, no one cared whether they were Jewish or Muslim, but everything changed for them after the establishment of the state of Israel. Some of them still speak Arabic amongst themselves, despite being fluent in Hebrew (and in some cases English).

The program was a great window on just how much the cultures of Mizrahi Jews (several of the people interviewed actually have Mizrahi as a surname) and Muslim Arabs. What a tragedy that they were forced from their homes. Fortunately, they had a Promised Land that welcomed them to new homes.

At the page linked above, the BBC offers a link to an audio clip.

Abraham's path

2007-02-16T15:38:00.000-08:00

Two researchers are following the footsteps of the religious patriarch, Abraham, in the hope that people will rediscover their common roots, reported the Christian Science Monitor on February 13. Briton Daniel Adamson and Jordanian Mahmoud Twaissi are tracking Abraham's route from Haran, Turkey, through Syria and Jordan, and into the West Bank, using GPS devices and Google Earth. Later they will continue their research into Egypt. They hope eventually that conditions will allow them to include Iraq (where Abraham's initial home of Ur is located).

To its initiators, the dream of building the path presents an endless array of possibilities: for religious pilgrimages, for developing the region's underrealized tourism potential, and, most important, for breaking down barriers of fear and misunderstanding between East and West.

Of course, the goal of a tourist path and multi-faith pilgrimages through this trouble region is quite distant. But their fusion of religion and ground-level peace-making is a welcome change. The project is being sponsored by the Global Negotiation Project at Harvard University.

"I've worked in the Middle East on and off since the late 1970s, and it seemed that among those of us who were looking for political solutions tended to kind of steer away from religion," [Howard] Ury [of Harvard] says in a phone interview from his office in Boston. The feeling he says, was "Don't go to close too religious issues – because that's too regressive, it's too hot."

"The Oslo process [to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict] failed in part because of that. The question came to me, 'What if you actually welcomed in the constructive role of religion, the ancient beliefs and ancient texts?'

"It occurred to me that Abraham was the single most underutilized resource in the Middle East. He represents faith, hospitality, kindness towards others. So the question was, could one somehow evoke the ancient stories to be a catalyst for coexistence, as well as understanding and even an economic source for growth."

It is a fascinating story and project. Ury notes in the article that the Jordanian government may be ready to work on expanding its own tourism potential by developing the Abraham Path through its territory.

Middle Eastern spices and kosher wine

2007-02-16T15:37:00.002-08:00

California Country, a program shown on RFD-TV, recently ran a show with two segments featuring Jewish agriculturists in the Golden State. One segment featured a havdalah in Napa Valley featuring Jewish vintners. One of the wineries featured was Covenant Wines, which begins its mission statement as follows:

The Jews may have the oldest codified relationship to wine of any people on earth, but kosher wine ironically is best known for its “unorthodox” taste. In the context of Jewish history, this dubious distinction is understandable. Thousands of years ago, the Jews lived in the Holy Land, where grape growing and wine making were common practice. But after the Roman conquest of Jerusalem some 2000 years ago, the Jews began a long period of wandering known as the Diaspora, which presented them with a serious enological challenge. Rarely were their new homes in exile blessed with vineyards such as those previously known in their ancestral land. [...]

A century ago, Jewish immigrants to America found local Concord grapes to be plentiful. But the wine produced from these native American grapes had a so-called "foxy" character. Keeping the wines sweet made them more palatable, and this sweet style became synonymous with kosher wine.

More recent history has been kinder to Jewish wine makers, and currently there is a revolution in quality among kosher wines the world over.[...]

The other segment was about some purveyors of exotic fresh spices. The presentation did not center on the fact that the owners of the company are Jews (specifically, Israeli immigrants), but it did include some scenes of their Friday meal with friends, where they showcase the spices in various dishes. In the scenes, one can see the owner wearing his kippah.

I never expected to see a Shabbat dinner celebration and a havdalah on a TV channel that calls itself "Rural America's most important network," but there it was!

Medlar runners

2007-02-16T15:37:00.000-08:00

In last week's Haftarah for Sh'mot, at Isaiah 27:6, there is a reference to a medlar tree. Or at least there is in the Plaut II translation (The Torah: A Modern Commentary, revised):

Jacob shall come to take root,
Israel shall blossom and bloom.
They shall fill the earth with fruit
like a medlar when it sends forth runners.

There is a footnote to this passage, which reads as follows:

Like... runners. In the translation, this phrase has been moved up from verse 8, for clarity.
Medlar. A form of apple tree

Well, now that is taking some liberties, and I am not talking about the moving of a phrase from one verse to another. I am talking about the medlar, which is no more closely related to apple than is a raspberry. (Both are part of the rose family, which is vast and includes many fruiting and non-fruiting plants.)

Medlars come from Persia, and certainly would have been known in ancient Israel. But, if answers.com can be believed, the Hebrew word for medlar is shin-samech-kuf. I do not see this word in the Hebrew text in Plaut II. A quick check of some other translations showed no reference to "medlar" (see blow). I wish I knew which word in this Haftarah passage was being translated as "medlar" and why, given the obscurity for most readers of that term.

As for the fruit itself, medlars were popular in Victorian times, but they are not very well known now outside of Persia, and, again according to answers.com, in Piedmont (Italy). They may be making a comeback, however, as I see medlar trees offered in many of my nursery catalogs; perhaps the medlar is being rescued from obscurity. Just don't call it an apple! (I have never eaten a medlar, but they can't be eaten right off the tree; they must be very soft.)

-------------------
JPS has:

[6] [In days] to come Jacob shall strike root,
Israel shall sprout and blossom,
And the face of the world shall be covered with fruit.

[7] Was he beaten as his beater has been?
Did he suffer such slaughter as his slayers?
[8] Assailing them with fury unchained,
His pitiless blast bore them off
On a day of gale.
[There is a note on "Assailing them" that says "Meaning of Heb. uncertain."]

A KJV that I have that was my mother's says:

[6] He shall cause them that come of Jacob to take root: Israel shall blossom and bud, and fill the face of the world with fruit.
[7] Hath he smitten him, as he smote those that smote him? or is he slain according to the slaughter of them that are slain by him?
[8] In measure, when it shooteth forth, thou wilt debate with it: he sayeth his rough wind in the day of the east wind.

And these are the same verses???

For the sake of completeness, let's also include verses 7 and 8 of Plaut II (as it was from 8 that the line about the medlars--which is what got me started here--was moved from):

[7] Did God strike [Israel] down like others who were struck?
Was [Israel] slain as [God] slew the slayers?
[8] God contended with them, sending them off with a hot blast,
as on the day the east wind comes.

New Year for Trees

2007-02-16T14:41:00.001-08:00

Tu B'Shevat is coming right up. As the OU explains, it is one of four Rosh HaShanahs on the Hebrew calendar, in this case the one for trees and their fruit. So, get out and plant a tree! But not on ~~Tu B'Shevat~~ Tu Bishvat,* for like so many other holidays in 5767 (e.g., the Rosh Hashana, Sukkot, and Chanukah), this one, too, falls on Shabbat. So, plant one on Friday and one on Sunday, and they will be a year apart in age!

With February starting, another "new year" is right around the corner: Pitchers and catchers will soon be reporting!

Indeed, winter must be coming to an end.

Chag sameach!**

* Thanks for BZ for the "Shewa Fight" link. In 2006, BZ had an extensive discussion of this, complete with Google rankings of the various alternates.

** It is not technically a holiday, but it's close enough!

What Lutherans believe

2007-02-16T14:41:00.000-08:00

It all started with medlars. (That is explained in the post immediately before this one.) I happened to look up an old bible that was my mother's in order to try to understand different translations of a specific passage.

One never knows where reading the Bible might lead! In this case, it led me to a series of old programs from Lutheran church services, including my conformation* in 1975, and my baptismal certificate,** among many items my mother had left in this bible. (If I had ever opened it up before, it would have been a very long time ago.)

One item was a statement of Lutheran principles of faith, adapted from Luther's Augsburg Confession. I'm not about to type all 28, but the first four really struck me in terms of how far I have come from my Lutheran youth. (In truth, I am sure I never actually believed any of this.)

1. There is one God who is three Persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
2. All people are by nature sinful, and in need of new birth through Baptism.
3. Christ is truly divine and truly human.
4. No one can become righteous in God's sight by his own efforts, but solely through faith.

Wow. No offense to any of my Christian friends or family who may read this one day, but to me the idea that one can't become righteous through one's own efforts just strikes me as so wrong, as does the entire idea of original sin. (Let's not even get into the nature of God and Jesus of Nazareth!)

Of course, I knew in a general sense that these were the beliefs of the faith in which I was raised and which gave my dear late mother so much comfort. But, still, seeing them in print in something that my mother saved because it obviously had meaning to her was quite an eye-opener.

I can't ask my mother what she thinks about my "finding" Judaism, but I believe she would be happy to learn that I am not an atheist after all. However, the one living witness to the baptism knows of my conversion intention. I was very pleased that when I told my Godmother, one my mother's childhood friends, about my plans some time ago, she said, without a moment's hesitation, "I am all for that!"

-------
* I was re-reading this after posting, and saw this typo. Uh, confirmation. Or was this a "Freudian" typo??

** And a piece of white cloth with a cross embossed on it, which was in with my baptismal certificate. I can't claim to know what this is, as I have never witnessed a baptism (well, other than my own, which I don't exactly remember), but I gather that this was a key piece of the ritual through which I was "saved" of the sins I had simply on account of having been born. Ugh!

World Religion Day

2007-01-21T18:48:00.000-08:00

Today I attended an event marking World Religion Day. It is apparently a concept that originated with the Baha'i Faith, and there are events to mark it in various communities. At the event I attended, there were representatives from Hindu, Sikh, Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, Judaism, New Thought, and Baha'i. The theme of the event was something like "drawing a circle big enough for us all." In other words, unity and the idea of "true religion" as being any of several paths that lead to peace and to one God.

For the speakers--many of whom were clergy from local congregations--the theme of the event required a rather delicate balancing act, a fact that the Sikh speaker explicitly acknowledged. That is, the theme is unity and how all these faiths ultimately are promoting the same thing. Granted that is an over-simplification of any religion, but that is precisely the point: As the Sikh representative noted, the very presence of representatives from so many traditions (so many yet still a fraction of all that exist) meant that there is something distinctive in each, and hence there is division as well as unity. (No one invoked E pluribus unum for some reason, though given the theme of the day, perhaps that should be reversed: E uno plures—or better yet, Ad unum plures.)

Despite the difficulty of the task, most of the speakers handled it quite well, I thought. Naturally, I thought the Jewish speaker was the best, but that is hardly a surprise: She's my sponsoring rabbi. She related two stories about Choni the circle drawer, one of which was about a man planting a carob tree, despite knowing that he won't live long enough to see it fruit. The planter explains that just as those before him planted trees that they could not enjoy, but he did, so he was planting for the benefit of future generations. (I liked the link to our upcoming holiday, Tu B'Shvat, or the New Year for Trees; on that theme I found a nice overview told for kids' benefit.)

The Sikh and Baha'i representatives were also good. What made them worthy of note is that they, like the rabbi, conveyed a sense of what their faith was, but grounded their remarks very clearly in the theme of the event (in the allotted five minutes!) Some of the others got the "unity" theme down well, but told us little about what their own teachings had to say regarding the theme. I was also impressed by the Christian representative, who came from what I took to be a nondenominational church. He joked about how there was simply no way he could "represent" all of Christianity, but he made a few terrific points: He said we (i.e. Christians) stand on the shoulders of Judaism, draw from the Abrahamic traditions of Islam as well as Judaism, and share connections to Zoroastrianism; Jesus even carried a message consonant with those of the Eastern faiths, he said.* But then came the kicker: He said Christians need to get off their "high horse" and "confess" for pushing Western culture in the name of evangelizing the religion. Amein, pastor!

There was, however, one speaker who failed in the theme of the day, in my estimation. He was the only one who came across as making assertions that his faith was the only way. His was the only presentation that made me uncomfortable. I am speaking of the Imam. His message boiled down to a claim that Muslims have shown the world what the faiths that came before only tried to say. It seemed to be: Join us and we'll show you unity. He also had a "helper" stand behind him; I felt as if the helper was watching the audience, even though for a while he was holding up a sign with some key concepts of the faith. (The sign was hardly necessary; he was really a "watcher," I think.) And he and his entourage were the only faith representatives to walk out as soon as the presentations ended and not to stay for the social and refreshment period after. Needless to say, he was a poor representative of Islam. (Or was he? Not something I want to get into in this forum. Maybe it was revealing, in its own way.)

All in all, an interesting afternoon. I only wish the advertised Zoroastrian representative had been in attendance.

_____

* The sentence before the asterisk has been revised since original posting. TikkunGer pointed out in a comment that I might have misrepresented what the minister said about Zoroastrianism, as I implied that he said it was "Abrahamic." Upon reflection, I doubt he would have said so, because I am pretty sure that Zoroastrianism predates the Biblical Abraham and continues to set itself apart from the Abrahamic approach to God. I can't recall precisely what the minister did say. I know he acknowledged some historical connections of Christianity to Zoroastrianism. But I will not attempt to characterize his claims, as I can't do so accurately. (Note to self: Next time take notes!) As I said at the end of the post, I really wish the originally advertised Zoroastrian representative had appeared at the event.

Reform Halakhah

2007-01-15T11:47:00.000-08:00

Mah Rabu has an excellent post relating his experiences at a recent panel about The Role of Halakhah in Reform Judaism.

Sample:

If we define "halakhah" by the Orthodox definition, then Reform Judaism is obviously not halakhic by that definition; if we line the denominations up on a scale from 1 to Orthodox, then of course Reform will come up short. If, on the contrary, we define "halakhah" as binding religious obligations, then all Reform views would agree that there is halakhah in Reform Judaism...

He then goes on to outline some of the key ways in which the Reform understanding of halakhah differs from that of the Orthodox and others. Key conclusions:

There is a concept called yeridat hadorot (descent of the generations) that informs Orthodox halakhah. The idea is that the Written and Oral Torah were revealed at some time in the past, and each successive generation is farther and farther from the original revelation... Since our generation is farther from revelation than previous generations, we are presumed to have less wisdom, and therefore we cannot supplant earlier halakhic decisions, but can only work within them...

Instead of yeridat hadorot, the operative principle [for Reform] is, in Isaac Newton's words, "standing on the shoulders of giants". By this understanding, we are greater in wisdom than previous generations, because our generation knows everything that they knew, plus everything that we have learned since then.

He has further thoughts on authority, autonomy, and the evolution of tradition.

One of my favorite lines is this:

We shouldn't assume that in the state of nature everyone is Orthodox, and that any difference from Orthodoxy requires justification.

Amein!

It is a good read. (It is also posted a Jewschool, and the comment threads at both locations have some interesting amplifications and dissents.)

Wrestling

2007-01-14T19:02:00.000-08:00

I have been planning for a while to elaborate on some themes I have addressed briefly before regarding my feelings towards the State of Israel. Now, having just read “Second thoughts on the Promised Land” in this week’s Economist, I think this is a good time to do so.

In a previous post, I made the observation that I felt that as I take on a Jewish identity, I am feeling at once more identity with the Land of Israel yet less Zionist. I am not even sure I am a Zionist, although I think I am—just not in the way that most established Jewish organizations--especially the American Jewish Committee--use (and sometimes abuse) that term.

The more I learn about Judaism, and in particular its connections to the agricultural society in which it originated and in which many of its festivals are grounded (so to speak), the more I feel connected to Israel, the Land, in an almost mystical sort of way. (I know, I am starting to use that word a lot, and I will admit that I would be hard pressed to give a coherent definition; more on that another day, perhaps.) Before I go on, I want to take a moment to note how a series of books (alas, no longer in print) by Nogah Hareuveni, published by Neot Kedumim, have crystallized these connections for me.

Even with my (growing) appreciation for the Land of Israel, I have always had serious reservations about the State of Israel. Not that I think it should be “wiped off the map,” in that horrible phrase that echoes across the news too frequently these days. My reservations do not extend to the very principle or fact of Jewish sovereignty in the Holy Land. In fact, if being committed to that basic idea is sufficient to make one a Zionist, then I am a Zionist. On the other hand, I have opposed so many actions of so many Israeli governments (in the Occupied Territories, in two wars in Lebanon, etc.) over the years as to make me question whether I am opposing specific acts of specific groups of politicians, or to something far deeper in the fabric of the very State of Israel itself. These feelings have only intensified as I have come to practice Judaism and declare myself a candidate for conversion. And, turning our attention to acts of Israeli governments in Jewish affairs, I have a very difficult time summoning up any deep affection for a state whose government and religious establishment would not even recognize me as a Jew, given the Reform auspices of the conversion I expect to undergo some time this year. If Israel does not love me enough to honor my (future) Judaism, why should I love it? (Again, here, I am speaking of the State and its institutions, not of the Land, which I love more and more all the time.)

I admire Israel and Israelis (as I have noted before) for building and maintaining a stable democracy and advanced economy in the face of hostile neighbors. It is a remarkable set of achievements. But then I admire several other countries for their accomplishments, in totally different contexts, as well (Canada, New Zealand, Norway, post-communist Czech Republic, and others). I hope to visit Israel some day soon, maybe even for an extended period some time, but I don’t think my Jewish identity is likely ever to be tied to the State of Israel in any deep way.

The Economist article suggest that, once I become a Jew, I will not be alone. I will not try to summarize the article here; the interested reader can find the issue and read the whole thing. (I believe the link I gave above will work only for subscribers.) The article provides several pieces of evidence from various studies that suggest that, while most Jews outside Israel (in the so-called Diaspora) still support Israel strongly, “their ambivalence has grown.” Many reject the very notion that they are in a “Diaspora” and the subordinate relationship with Israel (as conjured up by terms like aliyah) that the very concept of the Diaspora implies, and only 17% of American Jews call themselves “Zionists” (according to a study by Steven M. Cohen, a sociologist at NYU).

A key part of the reason for the “ambivalence” is, according to the article, that the major Jewish institutions in the “Diaspora” (especially in the USA) have not updated their view of the relationship between non-Israeli Jews and Israel. Many still seem stuck in the days when Israel appeared to be the only hope for the very survival of the Jewish people or in the days when the state itself was still highly vulnerable to massive Arab armies and seemingly dependent upon miracles (as in both 1948 and 1967) to survive. (This is not the place to debate threats from Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran, but suffice it for now to say that while they threaten Israel and Israelis, none is existential in the sense of threatening sovereignty itself.)

I feel very keenly the irrelevance of the stances taken by established American Jewish organizations on various issues. In fact, sometimes it’s worse than irrelevance; sometimes my feelings towards the mainstream organizations are of hostility. As the Economist puts it: “The main Jewish lobby groups have tended to back right-wing Israeli governments and avoid criticizing their policies.” I have a sense that this is accurate, and that it even applies to some of the more (otherwise) liberal groups. Too often there is a fear in American Jewish establishment circles that any criticism is a short step towards being in league with the “wipe Israel off the map” crowd.

As I have alluded to in previous posts, I was very uncomfortable—to the point of wrestling with whether my beliefs were compatible with being a convert to Judaism—during the summer, 2006, war in Lebanon. I was utterly opposed to the actions of the Israeli government, which were a gross over-reaction to what I will concede was a serious provocation by Hezbollah. Serious, but not justifying the relentless pounding of Lebanese cities and towns and infrastructure that went on for a month (and ended, just as I predicted at the outset to several of my new congregant-friends, inconclusively if not in defeat for Israel).

Now there is nothing wrong with being uncomfortable at times when making major life-changing decisions. And the terror Israelis and Lebanese lived under for that month renders my “discomfort” utterly trivial. Moreover, the outpouring of support from within the American Jewish community for Israelis in time of war is indeed something to be proud of. However, I will never forget how squirmingly uncomfortable I felt at an evening service in July when copies of a certain (and, let me say scurrilous and unbecoming of a great newspaper) column by that noted expert on the law of war and counterinsurgency policy, Alan Dershowitz, were being distributed approvingly. The theme of the column was that no one in southern Lebanon or the Beirut suburbs being bombarded by Israeli warplanes was meaningfully a “civilian.” One by one, various congregants went up to the bimah to speak of the need to stand behind Israel, while not one word of sympathy was expressed for Lebanese. It was very tribal, I felt at the time. As this was going on, my wife, knowing how uncomfortable I was, asked me if I was going to get up and say anything. No way! I know my place, as someone still then unknown to most of the congregation and not even a Jew. Besides, deep down, I think I understood even at the moment the need that the congregation (which includes some people who formerly lived in Israel and many who had family or friends in harm’s way) to have a “rally” in such difficult times. Still, it was an experience that led to serious—and still ongoing—“wrestling” with what it means to be a “Diaspora” Jew (to be) and a Zionist in the context of current Israeli and Middle East politics. And, in that process, I found my search of the websites of the leading Jewish organizations in America—and their lack of any forum for debating the policies underlying the war, even once the fighting ended—very disappointing.

As I noted above, the Economist article discusses an emerging trend in American Jewish life—mainly among youth—for less engagement with Israel and Zionism, and more with tikkun olam and Jewish social activism. For example, the Genocide Intervention Network and other activities around Darfur and other crises. The article also mentions the New Israel Fund, and I will quote the paragraph about it:

Some groups try to keep Israel relevant but in new ways. The New Israel Fund, for instance, holds traditional fund-raising appeals for Israel, but gives a lot of the money to untraditional causes like gay or Arab civil rights. It is also less afraid of politics: it published a newspaper article in November criticising the inclusion of Avigdor Lieberman, a right-wing extremist, in the Israeli government, while groups like the AJC kept an embarrassed silence.

Now that is a form of support for Israel that I can get behind!

These new forms of activism are, however, often disconnected from religious observance. Perhaps that is not surprising, given that most religious observance takes place in the context of institutionalized manifestations of American Judaism—the very organizations whose positions are nowadays often irrelevant to (especially younger) American Jews. In fact, the Economist notes that Cohen, the sociologist, believes there may be a developing “polarisation” in American Jewry:

a small group growing more pious and attached to Israel, while a larger one drifts away.

Well, why should there have to be polarization? I hope we can find a way to be both pious and attached to Israel in ways that do not involve failing to stand up and question the policies of that country’s government.

Finally, the article also notes the renaissance of Jewish life in Germany, Poland, Russia and other parts of central and eastern Europe, and a renewed interest in the study of Yiddish. (My own evolving Jewish identity is probably more connected to these regions, and in particular western Ukraine, than it is to Israel; perhaps this will be a theme of a future post.)

So, I expect to continue wrestling with Zionism and Israel. I think that, in a religious tradition that encourages “wrestling with God,” the least we and our community leaders can do is encourage these other forms of wrestling, as well, without feeling as though doing so threatens in any way the fabric of what it means to be a Jew.

2006: An extraordinary year (personal reflections)

2007-01-14T17:23:00.000-08:00

I have been meaning to get around to a post reflecting on 2006 for a while now—well, at least two weeks. It was my first year of Jewish observance beyond lighting Chanukah and (semi-regularly) Shabbat candles. In fact, it was the Shabbat before (Gregorian) New Year’s Day that my wife and I first entered a synagogue other than as a tourist (usually in Eastern Europe, some highlights of which can be seen at the Flickr set linked on the left sidebar).

We had been talking for months (maybe years) about looking for a shul to call “our own,” but for whatever reason, the time apparently had not been right before. Well, now we have attended almost every week (sometimes both evening and morning services) in that year (-plus) since. Our shul-shopping ended with our having “test-driven” only two. We have never been back to the one we attended that last Shabbat in December, 2005. It was the one geographically closest to us, but not close enough in any other sense. It was Conservative, and while that might itself be reason enough for it not to be a good fit, it was probably more the sense that a very small Jewish congregation that meets in a church just was not what we had in mind. (The ark was strategically placed in front of the Christmas tree and, as it was Unitarian Universalist, there were few other signs of Christianity around—not even a cross—but still, it was a church.) It is nice that Jews and Christians can worship in the same space, but it was not what we wanted. The next week we attended the closest Reform synagogue—about thirty minutes away. It turned out to be not only (relatively) close geographically, but also close to our hearts. We felt more both more comfortable and more welcome there than at our first “candidate” synagogue, and we joined a few months later without even shopping further. We are both very glad we did.

The first service we attended at this Reform shul was a bar mitzvah, as were one or two subsequent services. Then one Shabbat morning we walked in and there were about 20 people present. (At this point, I will mostly stop with the “we” as I am speaking only of own experiences the rest of the way.) At first, I found this quite intimidating. I had thus far met very few people at the synagogue, and could not read a single letter of Hebrew. (The typical service is a mixture of English, Hebrew with transliteration provided, and a significant amount of Hebrew without transliteration.) I knew very little about rituals and “accepted” synagogue behavior. Plunge right in! What was intimidating at first quickly came to be my preferred form of morning worship. While more than twenty fellow worshippers is nice, I take great meaning and comfort from being in the presence of the regulars, many of whom I now count as friends and teachers. We are fortunate also that the synagogue has two rabbis who are inspiring teachers and spiritual leaders, and a cantor with an amazing voice and high-energy commitment to enriching our worship experience. In fact, we really have four rabbis, as the husband of one and partner of the other are also rabbis who regularly contribute to the life of the congregation. Moreover, the husband of the senior rabbi is the instructor in my Intro to Judaism course and thus instrumental in opening my Jewish eyes and heart.

2006 was a year of incredible new experiences that I never could have imagined as it started. I witnessed a conversion service. I wish I could relate the inspiring and moving story of this particular woman, but this would hardly be the place for that. Suffice it to say that, even several months later, it remains one of the more powerful experiences of my first year of serious observance. In her remarks to the congregation, she perfectly encapsulated why Judaism is the right choice. (I will address that question from a personal perspective in other posts; this one is going to be long enough as it is!)

At the time, conversion was something I had barely begun to think about. My Jewish father-in-law (more about him later) told me early in 2006, as I was beginning to attend services, that he remembered that when he and I first met in 1991, I told him I was thinking about converting. I have no recollection of having said that, but I am certain that if he recalled such a conversation, then I said it. (As I have related elsewhere in this space, I have been interested in Jewish history and culture since the 1980s some time, if not earlier, but I had little interest in “religion,” per se, until very recently.) After that conversion service, I told the rabbi who had led that service that I was interested in conversion, and she asked me to contact her and meet with her whenever I was ready. It took me several more months before working up the will to do so. Meeting with clergy and declaring a desire to convert is not something to be done lightly, and I decided I would spend time reading, thinking, and discussing with my wife and others before formally presenting myself to the rabbi as a conversion candidate. In the meantime, I witnessed two more conversion services, attended many more services of various types, read most of a complete Torah cycle, and finally felt my earlier uncertainty nearly evaporate. (Why only “nearly”? Because sometimes I still wonder about the need for formal conversion. It is not a sense of doubting I want to live as a Jew; it is a doubt about whether I need an institutionalized imprimatur in order to feel Jewish. But I am almost certain I will complete the process, God and the beit din willing.)

So, what a year it was! With my wife, I attended Rosh Hashanah, Kol Nidre, and Yom Kippur services. On my own, I attended a service in the sukkah on the first Shabbat of Sukkot. I find something meaningful in an almost mystical way, that I can’t quite put my finger on, in the following. In my first year of holiday observance, Rosh Hashanah fell on both Shabbat and the first day of autumn, and as a result, Sukkot began on a Shabbat (with a perfectly clear night to enjoy the full moon). Chanukah also began on Shabbat and coincided exactly with the winter solstice (about which I wrote previously). Even my birthday fell on Shabbat (calculated by the Gregorian calendar, at least). No, there is probably nothing religiously significant in all of this co-incidence—just part of the calendar cycle. But in a year when I first began to pay attention to Shabbat as a day apart, having big events on the Jewish and my own personal calendar fall on Shabbat was noteworthy. And, given that I enjoy fruit growing (on a fairly serious scale) and thus have always paid attention to seasons, seeing the linkage of Jewish festivals to solar as well as lunar cycles, and having his be a year when the equinox and solstice coincided more closely than usual with holidays was spiritually meaningful.

Now, about that observance thing. I make a point of not working (especially in the sense of practicing my regular profession) on Shabbat, and I have found that truly liberating. I spend the day, after service, reading (Torah or books on Jewish history or just something I feel like reading that is not work-related or the news). Often my wife and I go out for lunch—something we rarely can do other days. Other days we spend time with a family member or friends. The biggest step forward in my Jewish observance has simply been recognizing one day as set aside for disengaging from the hurly burly. I also generally will not update either of my two blogs or check e-mail on Shabbat. A big test of my Shabbat observance will come in June when graduation day comes. As a member of the faculty, I am expected to attend (not that anything bad will happen to me if I do not), and it is a special day in its own right, celebrating the completion of two years of professional education for students that I have the privilege to teach in a required course in their very first quarter. But it is Shabbat; it may come every week, but it is only one out of every seven days, and I am loathe to treat one as anything other than a day for rest and Jewish learning. We’ll see. (The dilemma did not arise in 2006, as we were in Montreal at the time of graduation; it was for a conference, which meant I was “working” on Shabbat, presenting an academic paper and participating in the discussion of others. But it was a great conference, and I suspect I will always make the occasional Shabbat exception for truly extraordinary—even if not exactly holy—professional opportunities. One regret I have is not having found the time that weekend to attend a shul in Montreal, a city with a long-established and lively Jewish community.)

I did not manage to fast on Yom Kippur. I blame my hypopglycemia. One can’t properly take in the most powerful prayers of the year if one passes out from lack of blood sugar, after all. However, I ate almost nothing throughout the day, and even that partial fast (if there is such a thing) was powerful in focusing the mind. I was one of the few at the service to be wearing conspicuously non-leather footwear. I wore my plastic garden clogs; I was pleased when I saw a couple of other congregants also observing that one piece of Yom Kippur tradition.

As powerful as my first Yom Kippur experience was, I think it was on Sukkot that I felt the deepest connection to Judaism of any point in the year between the conversion I witnessed early in the year (as I mentioned above) and the end of the year (which I will get to, eventually). Sitting in the Sukkah that morning, with the sun shining through the (California native) palm fronds covering the structure, and with the first seasonal rains having fallen just the night before, was an intense experience. We read several passages from various sages about Jewish responsibility for caring for the earth, lent to us by God, and for its bounty that we celebrate with that festival. The rabbi called on me—fortunately “cold-calling” is not a regular feature of our Shabbat services as it is of my classes!—to read a passage that she knew would especially resonate with me. It was about the importance of planting trees—something so important that, according to this writing, even if you hear that the Messiah has come, finish planting the tree and then go greet the Messiah. I was honored to have been asked to read such a moving passage.

As Sukkot came to end, we celebrated an Erev Shabbat service that was a mix of Hoshana Rabba and Simchat Torah rituals. And, as the congregation was well in to its circuits around the sanctuary with the Torah scrolls, it started to rain. (Talk about mystical connections!; we don’t even get rain at that time of the year very often.) The following morning was Shimeni Azeret, and its Yizkor service, about which I wrote previously.

The year, 2006, entered its final month with a family tragedy. My father in law, Aryeh Lev ben Zvi Hirsch, died on Kislev 10 (December 1). It was rather sudden, albeit coming after a couple of weeks in hospital and in a year when his health had gradually declined. So, much earlier than I had ever bargained for, my Jewish learning suddenly included mourning. There is no easy way to experience the pain of losing someone so close. I have lost both my parents within the past six years, and now this. With Aryeh Lev’s agreement in his last days and the support of his wife of 50+ plus years that he was leaving behind, we chose to have a memorial at our shul, led by one of the rabbis we had come to know in this past year. This is the same rabbi I had met with just a few months previously to begin the formal conversion process, and she happens to be the granddaughter of the rabbi who led the bar mitzvah of my late father in law many years ago in Connecticut. (Talk about mystical connections!) (We had known of this connection since joining the congregation, though unfortunately, the rabbi and my father in law did not meet.) We sat shiva (though not for the literal seven days) and we had a minyan from the congregation at the house of mourning. I think my mother in law, although never observant, derived comfort from these traditions. I know I did. The experience showed how observant Jews take seriously their responsibility for the welfare of the community, and revealed how the traditions work to help mourners to disengage form worldly responsibilities for the first days as a means to cope with the shock and loss, but also to ease their way back into the world beyond our grief. The kaddish has new meaning now, of course. I knew it was inaccurate to call it a “prayer for the dead” to the extent that it never mentions death. But in the wake of this great loss to our family I now understand that one of the core principles of Judaism is precisely what is expressed in the kaddish: Whatever else we may be experiencing, we always recognize that God is awesome; we are forever in debt for God’s blessings that we experience during the time that we and our loved ones are on this earth, and our duty is to live our lives in a way that honors God’s blessings. My father in law did that in his life, and may his memory be an inspiration to me in 2007 and beyond. Aryeh Lev told me just a few months ago, “welcome, you will be a good Jew.” May I prove worthy of his welcome.

New high in Jewish legislators worldwide

2007-01-02T16:11:00.000-08:00

Is this an ideal topic for a blogging Jew (-to-be) who is also a political scientist, or what?

Noted in Haaretz shortly after the US midterm election:

Tuesday's U.S. elections brought the number of Jewish parliamentarians worldwide to an all-time high, according to the International Council of Jewish Parliamentarians.

There will be 13 Jews in the new Senate (up from 11, so they already had a minyan*) and 30 in the House (up from 26). However,

the United States is still only in third place worldwide for the number of Jewish legislators, after Israel [duh--(z)ed] and Britain.

Britain's elected Jewish legislators number 18 (in the 630+ seat House of Commons); there are also 59 in the unelected House of Lords. As for the rest of the world:

After Britain and the United States come France and Ukraine, with 18 Jewish legislators each, followed by Russia (13), Brazil (11), and Canada and Hungary (10 each)... According to the ICJP, there are 246 Jewish legislators worldwide (excluding Israel), up from 208 in 2005 - an increase of about 18 percent.

The organization noted that it does not use the halakhic definition of a Jew in determining whether a legislator is Jewish. [Good for them--(z)ed]

____

* Though not in the Orthodox sense: There were only nine Jewish men in the previous Senate, but now eleven of the thirteen are men.

Aliya Jewish immigration to Israel, but what kind?

2007-01-02T15:55:00.000-08:00

Extensive excerpts here from Anshel Pfeffer in The Jerusalem Post:

Israel doesn't have a constitution, but the Law of Return, one of its most fundamental documents, defines the nation's raison d'etre - to be a haven for the entire Jewish people.
This is Israel's DNA. But almost six decades after the country's rebirth, the definitions of statehood, emigration, nationality, citizenship, borders and travel have been revolutionized, while the state's and the Jewish Agency's definition of aliya is still stuck in the early '50s.
Take some fundamental questions: Is aliya automatically the best solution to an outbreak of anti-Semitism anywhere in the world, or should Jews maybe stick around and fight? Should Israel encourage the younger generation in successful communities to emigrate when it might deprive that particular outpost of the Diaspora of its best and brightest?
And should we be flexible with our definitions of Jewishness just to boost the aliya numbers? Does that mean accepting as citizens every tribe and indigenous people who have memories of their great-grandmothers lighting candles?
Moreover, what will we do when the reservoir of potential olim runs out, begin converting foreign workers so we can keep the aliya machine running?

The article notes that ~~aliya~~ Jewish immigration to Israel overall is down, yet from English-speaking countries, it is up. (More in another JPost article.) This creates a bit of a contradiction:

Sometimes it seems as if Israeli politicians want to have it both ways: to enjoy the support of strong and influential Jewish communities in places like the US and Britain, and to tell the children of these communities that the only place they belong in is Israel.

And the contradiction deepens:

The two biggest initiatives established over the last decade to link the Diaspora and Israel have been birthright israel/Taglit and Nefesh B'Nefesh. Both were dreamt up by private sector activists and donors, with the Jewish Agency and the government tagging along.
Did anyone sit down and think about the implications of these ventures? There is even a certain contradiction between the two, with birthright/Taglit designed to return Jewish teenagers to their communities with an imbued sense of their Jewish heritage, while Nefesh B'Nefesh is helping them leave those very communities.

Various news reports over the past year indicated that probably a plurality of the world's Jews now live in Israel, and it could become a majority relatively soon. Various other news reports have suggested that acts of antisemitism are on the upswing in many parts of the world, especially Australia and the U.K. These trends imply that the issues raised by Pfeffer will become ever more important for the Israeli government and ~~Diaspora~~ World Jewish leadership alike.

AJC, progressive Jews, and Zionism

2007-01-01T13:45:00.000-08:00

In a few weeks, the Intro class will have its session (which I have been waiting for as much as any) on Zionism and Israel. I have long--that is, going back decades before my decision to convert to Judaism--harbored deeply contradictory feelings towards Zionism, the State of Israel, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I have always placed the State of Israel among the very few countries in the world that I genuinely admire. Israel is deserving of admiration by all progressive-minded people everywhere for its construction of a stable and vibrant (if imperfect) multicultural democratic island in an authoritarian and sectarian sea. In a region where most states consist of varying forms of autocracy in which minority rights are suppressed (or in some cases, in which the rulers come from a sectarian minority that suppresses the majority) and many remain hostile to the very existence of Israel, the democratic achievements of Israel are justifiably a source of Jewish pride. At the same time, I have long believed that a terrible injustice was committed against the many residents of "Palestine" who fled (under whatever circumstances) in 1948 and that terrible injustices continue to be perpetrated daily against the survivors among these people and their descendants nearly sixty years later.

The experience of Judaization (my own, not that of parts of the West Bank) has only intensified the feelings on both sides of my inner conflict. On the one hand, I have come to understand, albeit probably only partially, the deep emotional and religious attachment that Jews feel to Israel (whether conceived as "The Land of..." or "The State of..."). On the other hand, I have had several uncomfortable, even cringing moments, at synagogue events--even services--when the topic of Israel, settlements, or Arab-Israeli wars (particularly the one of this past summer) have come up. I have come away from some of these moments wondering if I can even call myself a Zionist--as if becoming more Jewish is at once making me more pro-Israel yet less Zionist. And, yes, I see the (obvious) contradiction. Remember, I started this off saying that I have held "deeply contradictory" attitudes even before deciding to practice Judaism and seek conversion.

In this context, I could hardly be more troubled by a report published by The American Jewish Committee under the title, “Progressive’ Jewish Thought and The New Anti-Semitism.”

I have read the report. Mobius, at Jewschool, has a long and thoughtful demolition of the linkage implied by the report. The report makes a classic error: Taking a selective reading of the works of certain authors and not too-subtly conflating these authors' sometimes-extreme views with all members of the broader class being tarred (in this case "progressive" Jews; the quotation marks are the author's.) The report likewise implicitly conflates the overt acts of antisemitism that it chronicles at its beginning with the criticisms of Israeli policies that its author defines as "illegitimate"--as if allowing that political Zionism has become an ongoing justification for injustices against Palestinians puts one in the same category as those who accept the messages of Mein Kampf and the Protocols and those who charge Jews with poisoning wells.

The very idea of linking Progressive Jews (a mantle I will wear proudly one day) and antisemitism (old or "new") is offensive. I think Mobius, in the Jewschool post (which I highly recommend) is quite fair in his characterization of it. Restrained, even. I certainly will not quote from Mobius extensively, but I was especially struck by this passage, which refers to a discussion in the AJC report of Palestinians' use of the term "Nazi" and to the comparisons to South Africa (famously and recently by Jimmy Carter):

It is not accurate to compare Israel to Nazi Germany nor to claim that Israel is committing genocide. However, it is not necessarily antisemitic to do so either. Neither is it antisemitic nor even inaccurate to compare Israel to apartheid South Africa, though it is certainly unflattering and contrary to Israel’s projected self-image.

(I will note in passing that I agree with Mobius's characterization of the "Convergence Plan" and other aspects of current Israeli policy in the Occupied Territories as "hardly distinct from the South African Bantustan system.")

In general, I would like to see Jews of all (or no) denominational stripe (and non-Jews, for that matter) be more open to debate the current status of Zionism and Israeli policies without fear of being branded antisemitic or "self-hating Jew" or other unconstructive epithets. In this regard, the AJC has done us all a disservice.

As one commenter on the Jewschool thread says:

To criticize the IDEA of Zionism is not the same thing as trying to drives Jews into the sea.

Indeed. I don't know what the model ultimately should be, but the status quo--even the hypothetically peaceful version of it known as "the two-state solution"--is of dubious viability. When one side sees the establishment of the state of Israel as the fulfillment of "the two-thousand-year-old hope" and the other as "The Catastrophe," we have to be willing to use our progressivism--and, yes, our Judaism--to allow ourselves to have debates that might even lead us to reassess long-held axioms.

Holiday lights

2006-12-25T10:15:00.000-08:00

Chanukah ended at sundown Saturday. An hour or two afterwards, I happened to look out our window and see the lights on the houses across the canyon. The immediate thought that sprang to mind was, but isn't the holiday over?

Of course, a fraction of a second later, I realized the absurdity of my thought, but it was an interesting moment!

Well, that's a relief--Belief-O-Matic says I'm 100% Reform Jew!

2006-12-21T15:28:00.000-08:00

I will admit a weakness for the time-wasting opportunities afforded by various "quizzes" on the 'net. Via TikkunGer, I came across one at Beliefnet called the Belief-O-Matic. So, I took the quiz.

And, ready or not, here are the results...

The top score on the list below represents the faith that Belief-O-Matic, in its less than infinite wisdom, thinks most closely matches your beliefs. However, even a score of 100% does not mean that your views are all shared by this faith, or vice versa.

Belief-O-Matic then lists another 26 faiths in order of how much they have in common with your professed beliefs. The higher a faith appears on this list, the more closely it aligns with your thinking. [...]

1. Reform Judaism (100%)
2. Liberal Quakers (92%)
3. Unitarian Universalism (89%)
4. Neo-Pagan (86%)
5. Sikhism (85%)
6. Baha'i Faith (83%)
7. Mainline to Liberal Christian Protestants (75%)
8. Orthodox Judaism (71%)
9. New Age (71%)
10. Mahayana Buddhism (69%)
11. Islam (67%)
12. Jainism (66%)
13. Secular Humanism (65%)
14. Theravada Buddhism (55%)
15. Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons) (53%)
16. Orthodox Quaker (50%)
17. Hinduism (49%)
18. Scientology (47%)
19. New Thought (46%)
20. Taoism (46%)
21. Nontheist (38%)
22. Jehovah's Witness (37%)
23. Christian Science (Church of Christ, Scientist) (29%)
24. Mainline to Conservative Christian/Protestant (26%)
25. Seventh Day Adventist (26%)
26. Eastern Orthodox (21%)
27. Roman Catholic (21%)

Naturally, I am pleased at coming out 100% Reform Jew. I would never take a quiz like this too seriously, but it is fun and I certainly can't argue with the results. I would not have expected Neo-Pagan to come in at over 85%, but given the post below on ancient winter-solstice festivals, maybe I should not be so surprised! And that Baha'i comes in fairly high is hardly a surprise.

TikkunGer (linked above) has some interesting reflections on why "eastern God-centered" religions came in high on his own list. As for me, Sikhism scored high, but Hinduism low. I don't know enough about either to know why the two are so separated in my own beliefs (according to my responses to the quiz).

Seeing Liberal Quaker (I will admit I never knew there was any other kind) and UU up there is also not a surprise, I suppose (but see my "further reflections" below). Finally, seeing Eastern Orthodox Christian and Roman Catholic at the bottom reinforces my belief (so to speak) that the quiz has some validity.

Update: TikkunGer discusses re-taking the "quiz"!

And further reflections (22 Dec.): While I can see that one of the points of the quiz must be to reveal less-appreciated correlations of what I will call ancillary beliefs across faiths, any scoring mechanism that results in both Judaism (of any strain) and any form of Christianity being over 90% must be taken with a grain of salt (kosher salt, presumably). That is, the quiz's internal scoring and ranking mechanism is not eliminating faiths for which one or more fundamental beliefs of the quiz-taker contradict the faith. What I mean is that one--such as me--can't be compatible with any strain of Christianity if one utterly rejects the divine nature of Jesus of Nazareth. On the ancillary beliefs, sure, I am compatible with Quaker and some of the Mainline Protestant faiths, simply because I share many of the positions taken by the organized manifestations of these faiths on social and foreign policy. But they are still Christian and I am not. Taking them out leaves me with Neo-Paganism, Sikhism, Baha'i, and Orthodox Judaism to round out my top five. (Actually, New Age and Orthodox are tied; must be my inner mystic.)

For whatever it all might be worth...

Some other bloggers' experiences with the quiz:

Rachel, at VeryOpinionated.com finds "several of the answer choices too simplistic to accurately reflect what I believe." I expected to feel that way, as I did about a couple of political-beliefs quizzes I have taken. Yet one of the political-beliefs quizzes (which I may post here later) and this religious one produced perfectly reasonable results for me (again, for whatever it might be worth).

Ryan Schultz, at as I live a few more questions, finds that "what's interesting to me is how the quiz results actually match up with what I had already been thinking about myself and my spiritual beliefs" [emphasis in original]. He then had an inspired (pun intended) idea: "I would take the Belief-O-Matic test a second time, only answer each of the questions as I would have fifteen years ago, before I burned out of my job, before I came out of the closet, but after my separation and divorce. Results?" Quite different!

Rev. Matt Tittle at Keep the Faith found it accurate, and says that quiz-takers should be sure to take a look at their bottom five in addition to their top five. (Good advice, as I noted above.) And he invites readers to post their own in his comment section, and many did so.

The new moon and the winter solstice

2006-12-21T14:25:00.000-08:00

Today is the first day of winter (for those of us in the northern hemisphere). The winter solstice has been tied to spiritually imbued festivals since long before monotheism came around, and of course, our own Jewish Chanukah was built on the tradition of bringing light to the darkest time of year.

If (as discussed in the previous post) Chanukah is timed to the new moon closest to the winter solstice, then how often do these two events coincide as closely as they did this year? If I correctly understand the tables on Earth's Seasons and Phases of the Moon offered by the US Naval Observatory, it would be every nineteen years.

The last time the new moon was the night before the day of shortest daylight (as was the case this year) appears to have been 1987, and the next would be 2025. The actual moments of the new moon and solstice last came on the same night in 1995 and would do so again in 2014.

Chanukah: Light and darkness

2006-12-18T11:36:00.000-08:00

Chanukah occurs when it does in order that we are lighting candles at the time of maximum darkness--the new moon closest to the winter solstice:

if Hanukkah is not merely a solstice but a darkness festival, then the 25th of Kislev is the perfect time. In some years, the solstice day itself would be a night of bright full moon--especially powerful in an agrarian-pastoral culture with few artificial lights. So even the solstice itself would feel less like the darkest day of the year on such a moonlit night. By setting Hanukkah on the 25th of the month, the Jews made sure that the night would be dark. By setting it in Kislev, they made sure the day would be very short and the sun very dim. [Rabbi Arthur Waskow at My Jewish Learning]

In that case, Jews in the southern hemisphere really should celebrate the holiday in Sivan or Tamuz, no? And adopt a summer-solstice festival in Kislev.

Palestinian instability

2006-12-18T11:05:00.000-08:00

It seems obvious that Israel will not be meaningfully secure until Palestine is stable. And events over the weekend portend an increasingly unstable situation in the Palestinian Territories.

President Mahmoud Abbas insists he will press on with his plan to hold early elections for both presidency and parliament, despite Hamas's claim that it will boycott them on the grounds that they are unconstitutional.

I have studied the Palestinian constitution, and Hamas's interpretation is correct, as best I can tell (from the English translation posted at the PA's website). There is no provision allowing the president to dissolve parliament and call early elections. The parliament was just elected in January for a four-year term.

What little of the coverage of the Palestinian elections noted, however, was that Hamas barely "won" the elections. In fact, Hamas was backed in the portion of Palestine's electoral system that asks for voters' party preference by only 44% of the voters. Fatah came in a very close second, with 41%.

If Palestine used an electoral system like that of Israel, Hamas would have won less than half the seats in parliament and been forced to form the unity government that Abbas has been trying for months to create. Instead, Palestine uses an electoral system in which only half the seats are allocated based on party preference. The others are elected by one of the world's worst electoral systems* and the result was that the overall outcome was 56% of the seats held by Hamas, which thus claimed it had no reason to form a unity government because the constitution allows the prime minister and cabinet to be appointed by the majority of parliament. Again Hamas's interpretation is correct.

The political tragedy in a situation filled with tragedy is that a majority of Palestinian voters voted against Hamas, and no doubt many of the plurality that did vote for it did so because of disgust with the staus quo, and not to endorse the Hamas rejectionist platform or its Syrian overlords. But Hamas's leadership was put in the drivers seat by the electoral system.

It's hard to see an end to the instability as the presidency and the parliament and their respective supporters clash over Abbas's attempt to call these elections. And the irony is that, if Hamas participated in them, it could very well win the presidency as well as retain the parliamentary majority (assuming no change in the electoral rules).

It is hard to see how Abbas's gambit--backed by Tony Blair on his visit over the weekend--can produce a better outcome than the status quo. Bad as that is.

----------------
* Half the seats in the Palestinian parliament are elected in multi-seat districts by plurality--about as disproportional and therefore unrepresentative an electoral system as exists. The voter may cast votes for up to as many candidates as there are seats in the district. The winners are simply the candidates with the most votes. This system practically guarantees all the seats in the district go to the largest and best organized party. That is, if all or most of the plurality party's supporters use all their votes and cast them all for candidates of one party, it will sweep. Hamas was the plurality--but not majority--in most districts, and it also had the most disciplined supporters (i.e. they were somewhat more likely to use all their votes for their party's candidates than were Fatah voters). The other half of the seats are allocated by Territory-wide proportional representation, based on a separate party-list vote.

Ahmadinejad's allies do poorly

2006-12-18T10:51:00.000-08:00

Good news. If Ahmadinejad's "conference" on the Shoah was meant to mobilize his ultra-fundamentalist allies in the local-council and Assembly of Experts elections, the gambit backfired. According to Reuters India (a much more thorough source than most other English language media, though BBC has been good on this, too), turnout in these elections last Friday was much higher than had been expected (around 60%). The reformists were the ones who were mobilized, and they and more moderate conservatives have pushed Ahmadinejad's allies into a minority on the councils of Tehran and other major cities.

Even in the Experts election--one of the most important institutions in Iran--candidates loyal to Hashemi Rafsanjani (whom Ahmadinejad defeated in the surprise outcome of the June, 2005 presidential election) performed better than allies of Ahmadinejad.

Iran is not a democracy. Far from it. However, it is not a totalitarian state, either. And even if we want to call it a theocracy (whatever that might mean), we have to recognize that those who claim to determine how God wants Iran to be governed are divided over what that means. The Assembly of Experts consist of the clerics who effectively govern Iran through their influence on the Supreme Leader. The Experts also pick the new Supreme Leader--a task they are unlikely to be called on to perform until Ayatollah Khamanei dies. The Supreme Leader can't manage the country alone, and the balance of factions within the Islamic clergy affects how he manages the political process. And that "managing" includes exercising, directly or indirectly through other institutions he controls, his various vetoes over the president.

So, while the president was not on the ballot on Friday and neither was the parliament (with which Ahmadinejad has had numerous policy conflicts), the outcome shows that his bluster has not won him and the ultras within the clerical establishment additional support. In fact, the reverse has happened.

Ahmadinejad is weaker now that he was last week, and the chances that the next Supreme Leader will be from the ultra-fundamentalist camp just declined. This is good news.

Neturei Karta, honored guests of Ahmadinejad

2006-12-12T09:57:00.000-08:00

OK, I understand that some Orthodox Jews are anti-Zionist. But how one tiny and inconsequential sect can give credence to a Shoah-denying "conference," at which America's leading contemporary fascist is also present, and that is sponsored by the government of Iran, all the while claiming to be speaking for all Orthodox Jews, is really beyond me. Fortunately, they are tiny and (mostly) inconsequential, though they have gotten their very visibly Orthodox appearance on world television this week, making them seem as though they are more consequential than they are.

Interesting further discussion at Jewschool.

Haredi air?

2006-12-11T10:10:00.000-08:00

Some haredi businessmen in the USA are claiming in setting up a haredi-owned airline to compete with El Al, which some haredi leaders are threatening to boycott over a decision to conduct some flights on Shabbat. As noted in the JPost:

El Al stands to lose a significant chunk of its clientele if, as is expected, the boycott is called. Haredim make up some 20 to 30 percent of passengers on certain flights to the US and Europe. They are among the most faithful clients who continue to fly even during difficult geopolitical situations in Israel.
In theory, El Al could offset some or all of the losses by flying on Shabbat.

Imagine that. Individuals could decide for themselves whether or not to fly on Shabbat.

Conservative Reform and Reaction?

2006-12-07T15:31:00.000-08:00

The Conservative Jewish movement of the USA has made its much-anticipated decision to allow the ordination of openly gay rabbis and to recognize same-sex marriage (or "commitment"). At the same time, it continues to allow the more "orthodox" within to go on opposing such liberal reforms.

There are those who believe that this attempt to split such a large difference is doomed to split the movement itself. For instance, Rabbi Ismar Schorsch, former chancellor of the Conservative movement's Jewish Theological Seminary in New York, whose views were summarized recently in Haaretz:

Schorsch predicts that the liberal branch of the Conservative movement (the groups demanding rights for homosexuals) will eventually join the Reform movement, while the conservative branch of the movement will join modern-Orthodox groups, which are also experiencing growing conflicts with the conservatives (more religious) in their own ranks.

There will still be three streams, but their composition will be different: The conservative Orthodox will be on one side, the Reforms and liberals on the other, and a collection of modern Orthodox and conservative Conservatives in the middle.

Ongoing discussions in many places on the blogosphere, including Velveteen Rabbi and Jewschool.

Who is a Jew? And Why convert?

2006-12-07T12:57:00.000-08:00

A post in two parts...

1. Who is a Jew?

In the ongoing debate, I endorse the definition of Rabbi Rami, who says that a Jew is:

a person who calls herself a Jew, makes rabbinic Judaism her primary source of spiritual exploration and celebration, wrestles with God, Torah, Mitzvot, and Israel, and who identifies with, joins with, supports, and defends her fellow Jews world-wide.

My definition is behavioral rather than genetic, and is stricter than blood, if not thicker.

The context of Rabbi Rami's post is a question of whether Messianic Jews still count. He concludes that he uncertain whether they fall within or beyond his definition.

In any case, a behavioral definition of being a Jew. Amein, rabbi!

2. Why convert?

I hasten to add that my statement about a behavioral definition is not a statement against a process of "conversion," per se. This is something I have wrestled with for months. That is, why enter a formal process when I could just behave and believe? That is, do I need the institutional seal of approval? Even more, do I need it when it is Reform Judaism and just about only Reform Judaism (or probably Reconstructionism) that appeals to me, yet many more traditional/Orthodox Jews would never recognize me as a Jew in any case? I think TikkunGer sums up the thinking I have been gravitating towards:

it’s been my experience at least with most religions the conversion process is about personal salvation or emancipation, and anything else is a distant second to the primary reason. [...]

Becoming a Jew is about recognizing God and Torah but requires more than just these two ingredients, it’s about joining a family, it’s about joining a tribe, it’s about joining a peoplehood. [...]

This joining of the tribe is very much like immigrating to a new land, both literally and spiritually and requires more than just a desire. It requires that a convert not only learn and study, but also demonstrate that he or she is able to live life in a Jewish fashion.

This discourse (and the whole post is really worth reading) deserves a personal reflection. I was interested in "The Jewish People" long before I came to think about "The Jewish Religion." In fact, as I discuss in my previous post On Atheism, from the time I drifted away from Lutheranism until the time I decided to enter Judaism, I seldom gave God and spirituality much thought.

There have been times in the more recent phase of my own journey when I thought that my interest in peoplehood before religion was putting it backwards. But I am getting increasingly confident that it is precisely the right way to do it. If all I wanted was spirituality without Jesus-as-Lord, I could be a Bahai or a Buddhist, or any number of religions that don't require anything like a formal "conversion" process. But that's not what I've been looking for. It has taken me a while--including 15 years of marriage to my wonderful Jewish wife--to realize that it was both the Chosen People and Who Chose Them that I wanted to get closer to.

Ukrainian anti-Semitism

2006-12-06T15:36:00.000-08:00

How sad. One in three Ukrainians do not want Jews to be citizens of their country, a survey found. The Ukrainian Jewish community is experiencing quite a revival. At the same time, attacks on Jewish people and monuments are increasing One recent example was the damage last summer to the Babiy Yar memorial menorah.

Of course, Ukraine is the country where the Cossak Hetman, Bogdan Chmielnicki, is such a national hero that there is a massive statue of him right in the center of Kyiv. (See the Jewish Encylopedia.com entry on Chmielnicki.)

I wonder if the pollsters did any regional breakdown. I would guess these attitudes are much worse in the unreconstructed east than in the west.

(Thanks to Jewschool for the tip.)

***
UPDATE: A newer JPost item indicates that the study's authors found attitudes towards Jews to be in about the middle of the spectrum of Ukrainian minorities about which respondents were asked:

71.8 percent of respondents said they did not want to see [Roma] as citizens of Ukraine, and 61.4 percent expressed a similar attitude toward ethnic Romanians.

Moreover, the survey found, that 6.6 percent of Ukrainians do not want to Jews to come to Ukraine, compared to 14.6 percent of those who do not want to see Americans in the country and 0.7 percent of respondents who do not want Russians to visit Ukraine.

For a variety of reasons, Ukraine is a country for which I feel a high degree of affinity. It is so troubling to learn of such high degrees of xenophobia and racism among that country's population.

AJC to PM: Don't

2006-11-30T14:04:00.000-08:00

Continuing a theme I mentioned a few days ago (just scroll down), Haaretz reports:

The heads of the American Jewish Committee (AJC) sent an unusually harsh letter Tuesday to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, warning that if a proposed change goes through in the Law of Return excluding converts in the definition of a Jew, it could seriously impair support for Israel among American Jews.

No kidding.

Back at the start of the Intro course, our rabbi asked us to list what we considered the main challenges to the Jewish people. I said: Increasing divergence of interests between the Diaspora and Israel. This issue of converts and the Law of Return is a more or less perfect demonstration of what I had in mind.

Haaretz again:

In the letter, AJC president Robert Goodkind ... said if the bill became law it would alienate precisely those groups that are the basis for support for Israel in American society.

I think that is a risk to be taken seriously. On the other hand, given that another of my concerns is that the institutional voices of American Judaism all too often take "support for Israel" to mean support for the right wing in Israel (e.g. regarding the Territories), maybe a little alienation would be a healthy thing.

The Jews of Egypt

2006-11-26T15:53:00.000-08:00

The diversity of backgrounds one can find within the Jewish community never ceases to amaze me. This past summer, one Shabbat morning we met a man who had just moved from the East Coast and was engaging in some "shul shopping." He is originally from Egypt, having left shortly after the 1956 Anglo-French-Israeli war with that country.

I will simply call him 'N' to respect his privacy. N mentioned that he was Sephardic and spoke Ladino (Judeo-Spanish) and that his family had lived in Turkey prior to Egypt. That is interesting enough right there. But I never knew before that French had once been the lingua franca (appropriately enough) of the Egpyptian Jews. N spoke beautiful French--at least as best I could tell--with a congregant.

An article by Joel Beinin on Egyptian Jewish Identities in the (now defunct) Stanford Humanities Review (1996) notes:

In 1860 the Paris-based Alliance Israëlite Universelle embarked on a Jewish "mission civilisatrice," to uplift and modernize the Jews of the Middle East by imbuing them with French education and culture. French opposition to British imperial policy in Egypt throughout the nineteenth century allowed many Egyptians, not only Jews, to embrace French culture as an acceptable form of European modernity, and, by the late nineteenth century, French was the lingua franca of the entire Egyptian business community. Knowledge of a European language was virtually a requirement for a white-collar job in the modern private sector of the economy and constituted significant cultural capital, so many Egyptian Jews willingly underwent de-Arabization.

As for the Jewish community of Egypt more generally, an article by Trudy Rubin of the Christian Science Monitor and the Alicia Patterson Foundation from September 17, 1974, notes:

In the 1930's the city [of Cairo] held 30-40,000 Jews. Today there are 200 left. They were a cosmopolitan group, engaged largely in trade, banking, and commerce, owning rich villas and apartments, traveling frequently to Europe, and sending their children to Jewish or European-run schools. Their first language was French, followed by Italian, but many also spoke some Greek and English, and the men at least usually spoke Arabia [sic]. They moved in the extensive foreign communities, which have nearly disappeared since the French-British-Israeli invasion of Suez in 1956, and the nationalization of most large businesses by 1961.

The article notes how increasingly difficult life became for this community after 1948, but especially after the 1973 war, about one year before the article originally appeared. The article also includes two photos of synagogues in Egypt: the 12th century, C.E., Ben Ezra and the more modern Adli St. Synagogue, both in Cairo.

Also interesting on this topic is the page by the Foundation for the Advancement of Sephardic Studies and Culture, entitled, "A Short History of The Exodus Of Jews From Egypt."

I wonder about the status of these synagogues and any remnant community today, more than thirty years later.

Thanks to N for enlightening me about the French-speaking Jews of Egypt.

I was inspired to post this here by a post at Point of no return, which I just ran across today.

Lentil soup

2006-11-26T14:03:00.000-08:00

The past week's sidra, Tol'dot, contains the reference to Jacob giving Esau bread and lentil soup as Esau sold his birthright. Concidentally, in a blog that I just discovered today ,and am enjoying, The Jews of Lebanon, there was a post in October about the culinary traditions retained by Middle Eastern Jews in New York.

“Ours is the real, original cooking of the Jews,” said Vicki Maijor, whose grandmother was born in Aleppo, Syria. In the Bible, she pointed out, when Esau sells his birthright, “it is for lentil soup, isn’t it?”

Some virtual menu samplers:

sambusak, crisp little half-moons stuffed with allspice-scented meat or tangy white cheese; mujadara, lentils and rice cooked together and thickly piled with gold-brown strands of onion; mahshi, vegetables like tiny eggplant and finger-size zucchini stuffed with spiced meat and rice; and kahk, sesame-sprinkled rounds of crumbly pastry.

[...]

Ms. Hasson is famous in the community for her typically Lebanese fruit preserves, like tiny apples cooked in sugar syrup, jellied quince paste and finely shredded and candied spaghetti squash...

...a green Egyptian soup called melokhia, spiked with vinegary scallions to cut its richness...

...chickens mounded with rice and pine nut stuffing; brisket in a sweet and sour sauce; a roll of roasted kibbe [described elsewhere in the post as "ground beef stuffed into an impossibly thin shell of bulgur wheat"] in cherry sauce; braised celery root and fennel in turmeric

Wow, this all sounds fantastic!

One step forward, one step back?

2006-11-24T16:55:00.000-08:00

In news from Israel this week, one big advance for individual rights, and one proposed large setback.

On the one hand, the Supreme Court ruled that same-sex marriages performed abroad must be recognized as valid under Israeli law.

On the other hand, the Chief Rabbinate has prepared a bill, which may be supported by some cabinet members, that would remove converts from the Law of Return. As noted by Haaretz:

The bill was initiated by Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar in an effort to block the possibility that the High Court of Justice could recognize Reform conversions carried out in Israel...

The main element in the bill is a change in the clause defining a Jew for the purposes of the Law of Return. At present the clause defines a Jew as a person born to a Jewish mother or who converted to Judaism. The bill proposes that an the only individuals recognized as Jewish by the Law of return will be those born to a Jewish mother.

If this bill passes, it will be all that much harder for us non-Orthodox converts (or converts to be) to identify with the State of Israel, given that the 'Jewish State' would not see us as Jews. Not that I plan to ~~make aliya~~ claim Israeli citizenship as a Jew, but still, this rankles.

Chanukah and freedom

2006-11-11T18:11:00.000-08:00

Today is the 21st of Heshvan, and so Chanukah is just over a month away. Besides, it is one of the next topics in our Intro class, and thus a good moment to reflect on the holiday and my relation to it.

Chanukah was certainly the first Jewish holiday I ever learned about. For that I can thank Mrs. Klein, whose daughter was a classmate in my elementary grades and who came one year to class to give a presentation about this "different" December holiday. That was many years ago, but I remember the latkes and the dreidel game, and perhaps more vaguely, the menorah. Of course, there was presumably no lesson on any religious significance.

I have no such precise recollection of when I first learned of any of the other Jewish holidays, though I am certain that I learned of Yom Kippur because of something I read as a pre-teen about Sandy Koufax and his not playing a World Series game because of the holiday. At any rate, it was much later in life that I learned that Chanukah is not all that important a holiday to Jews after all. But, while it lacks the Biblical basis of the major holidays and festivals, it certainly deserves great celebration. And not because it is an "alternative" to Christmas. In fact, it is far better than Christmas! (And better not because it lasts so much longer.)

At our house, signs of Christmas (in honor of my original religious traditions) ceased to appear some years ago. As long as we have been married, we have always kindled the candles of the Festival of Lights. I find the lights of Chanukah beautiful and inspiring, and I can hardly wait for this year's holiday to begin!

While I have enjoyed Chanukah now for several years, only recently have I learned what a great historical event the holiday commemorates. It is a celebration of one of history's earliest recorded successful guerrilla wars of liberation. Not only did the Maccabean rebels take to the hills to fight for religious freedom; their rebellion was also a struggle for political self-determination against imperialist oppression.

Maybe it is because I am a political scientist--and not only that, but a passionate consumer and advocate of the ideals of Jefferson, Madison, Washington, and their freedom-fighting compatriots--that my more recent understanding of Chanukah is so appealing to me. In that regard, it is more significant that Chanukah follows that most American of holidays, Thanksgiving, than that it precedes (and sometimes, as in 2005, coincides with) Christmas. And, to take the relationship of Thanksgiving and Chanukah full circle, originally Chanukah was a delayed celebration of Sukkot, the eight-day celebration of the bountiful harvest, upon which Thanksgiving itself is presumably based.

Many guerrilla wars in our time have been fought in the name of liberation from imperialism and dictatorship. Far too many of them have produced even worse forms of political and religious repression ("Meet the new boss, same as the old boss"). The American Revolution itself was a genuinely radical expression of the freedom that the original celebrants of Thanksgiving sought in the New World. Yet too often, we, the descendants of our political ancestors--Jefferson, Madison, and Washington--have forgotten the lessons. We have elevated the ideology of our assumed rectitude as "freedom-loving" Americans and the virtual idol-worship of our Constitution to a secular religion. And in doing so, we have acquiesced in oppression committed in our own name at home and abroad. And, sadly, too many Jews here and in Israel acquiesce in acts of oppression committed in the Occupied Territories and recently in Lebanon in the name of the freedom and security of a State for the Jewish People.

Chanukah is thus a time to remember that we must never to take our political or religious freedom for granted, nor be blind to others' lack of such freedoms. It is a perfect time not only to rejoice in the miracle of 25 Kislev, 165, B.C.E., and in the mystical beauty of the Festival of Lights, but also to remember that one of our mandates as Jews is Tikkun Olam--repairing the world. That spirit surely includes promoting liberation from oppression--most especially oppression committed in our name as Americans or as Jews--in any way that we can. Of course, the challenge is to find the worthy contemporary counterparts of the Maccabeean freedom fighters. Alas, that is the hard part.

The US election result

2006-11-11T16:04:00.000-08:00

This is a blog about Judaism, and one person's discovery of it. But that one person happens to be a political scientist, so I have to make some observation about the elections just concluded in the USA:

Halleluyah!!!!!!

Not because Democrats are so terrific. They are not. But because this breaks the unity of control of America's first (and, please, please, last) ideological party. Oh, nothing against ideology. In fact, in the pre-Bush years I used to lament that American politics was insufficiently ideological. It is a lament I might return to.

The problem is when one ideology prevails, endorsed by not even a majority (or not even a plurality, as in the 2000 election), and the policy-making process fails to reflect the real diversity of ideologies in the country it is supposed to represent. That is what America has endured for six years.

I never thought an ideological and generally disciplined party such as we have seen for these six years could gain control over our fragmented-by-Madisonian-design political institutions. But it did.

So the thing to celebrate is that once again the Congress will be controlled by politicians--most of them not very ideological--who have an electoral incentive to make checks and balances work.

Now, back to Judaism. Well, not Judaism, per se, but Israel. As Jewshool reminds us, those of us who want our country to be a force for progressive change in the Middle East will be disappointed, of course, by the new congressional majority.

For those of us who yearn for peace in Israel and an end to the occupation, yesterday’s Democratic victory in the U.S. House of Representatives and ... Senate is a hollow one. Whether or not the Democrats can bring disparate factions together to present a true exit strategy for the failed war in Iraq, we can be entirely sure that they will be strongly united behind the failed policies of the current Israeli government - so evident by yesterday’s massacre [in Beit Hanun]. Though Republican accusations of Democrats as “anti-Israel” appear to have been entirely ineffective in swaying the Jewish vote (87% voting for Democrats), expect the Democrats to find every opportunity to prove time and again how “pro-Israel” they truly are.

Indeed, that is sure to be the case.

I close with two of my favorite quotes from Madison, which express my feelings about this election and what it is, at last, putting in check:

The essence of Government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse.

[On designing checks and balances:] …so contriving the interior structure of government as that its several constituent parts may, by their mutual relations, be the means of keeping each other in their proper places.

The birthday of Bahá'u'lláh

2006-11-11T15:40:00.000-08:00

I do not know much about the Baha'i faith, though much of what little I do know is appealing. If I were not already confident that Judaism offers me everything Baha'i could (and more), I'd consider it. In any event, this weekend marks the birthday of the Bahá'u'lláh, the most recent of the Baha'i messenger-prophets.

I find it interesting that one of the holiest places for the Baha'i, the shrine of the Bab, is located in Haifa, which also happens to be the most mixed (Arab/Jewish) major city in Israel. Baha'i have been much oppressed in Islamic countries--especially the faith's birthplace in Iran--but their holy site thrives in Israel.

Among the central tenets of Baha'i are the absolute unity of God, that "God is unknowable, limitless, outside time," and that humankind will one day unite and form a peaceful global civilization.

Isn't that precisely what God chose the Jews to teach the world thousands of years ago? Perhaps if humans have yet to figure that out, we Jews need some help. And if it takes the Baha'i, and their notion that "God has sent messengers for each era," including Zoroaster, Abraham, Buddha, Krishna, Moses, Jesus, Mohammed, the Báb and Bahá'u'lláh, to teach these ideas, then I welcome their assistance.

Happy birthday and shalom, Bahá'u'lláh!

On Atheism

2006-11-11T15:35:00.000-08:00

As I alluded to in the previous post, I was once a (nominal) Lutheran. I was baptized (though I can't say that I recall) and confirmed (though I barely recall more of that than of my baptism). I guess that means I was a Lutheran--at least in the institutionally recognized sense. But I never really was a Lutheran, or any kind of Christian, for a very simple reason: The Jesus Gap. I could not bridge the gap between the story of Jesus as related over and over again in Christian teachings, and my own beliefs--whatever those might have been, and whatever those might be now.

I probably last attended a Christian service (other than weddings or funerals) in my late teens or very early twenties. I just ceased to have any interest. I don't think I ever believed in Jesus as Son of God, and at some point I simply stopped even asking myself whether I believed in God at all.

Somewhere in my later twenties I came to be interested in Judaism, but I still did not address the issue of God, per se. I was interested in the cultural and historical aspects of the Jewish tradition, but I considered myself agnostic. I never considered myself atheist, but I was probably pretty close. It just did not matter to me.

The subjects of atheism and what it means, and the relation of concepts held by agnostics and atheists of how the world works and our place in it, have been on my mind again recently, for two reasons.

First, our senior rabbi made an interesting remark during the Kol Nidre service about atheism and Jewish concepts of God. She said that atheists who look closely at their beliefs might find that their ideas actually match a Jewish concept of God pretty closely. (As an aside, I wonder if atheists examine their beliefs any more than some of the most fervent Christians do.)

The rabbi's comment began with the observation that we all "wrestle with God" (a formulation I never heard in my Lutheran days, but have heard over and over since attending a synagogue--a reform synagogue--regularly). She added that Judaism has given us a broad spectrum of beliefs about God, with many contradictions, but a general notion that God, to Jews, is simply beyond any genuine human ability to describe.

The rabbi then related a story of a man who went village to village searching for God. In one village, the rabbi assured the man that if he stayed a while in the village, surely he would come to know God. Whenever he felt lonely, he went to the house of study, where villagers engaged him in uplifting stories about Judaism's long and rich history. At one point, he became ill. Villagers cared for him.

The man ended up staying for many years. Then one day, the rabbi asked him if he had found God yet. He replied that he had indeed, right here in the village, in study and in the people who were so kind.

The lesson in the story, of course, is that God can be found everywhere.

The second reason for thinking about atheism and responses to it was an item in the local newspaper, originally published in the Minneapolis Star Tribune, about a new book defending atheism. (Another aside: If it has to be defended as a set of beliefs--or even as a set of non-beliefs--is atheism just another religion after all?)

The newspaper story is an interview with Richard Dawkins, a professor at Oxford who has written a recent book called The God Delusion, in which he aims to advance the notion that:

All religion is superstition... and faith breeds ignorance, oppression and strife. We respect it too much and question it too little; meanwhile, evolutionary science, which offers a brilliant and beautiful explanation of origins and existence, is bashed by ignoramuses...

In addition to that remark about science and evolution--which I will come back to--a few things in the interview struck me. For instance, Dawkins was asked about the great works of art and architecture that have been inspired over the generations by religion. Dawkins responded:

We can look at a lot of those things as historical or cultural relics. One reason art has historically been linked with religion is because works were commissioned by the church. Had that not been the case, perhaps Bach's oratorios would have been inspired by the beauty of the Milky Way; perhaps Michelangelo's gifts as displayed in the Sistine Chapel would have been laid out elsewhere in praise of scientific principles, which also can inspire great wonder.

That is all quite valid. And, indeed, those who would deny evolution--and its teaching in schools (whether public or private)--in the name of religion are indeed "ignoramuses." But can anyone claim that science has an answer to all of the mysteries of the universe and creation? Of course not. Maybe it will some day, maybe it never will. But if we are inspired by the "beauty of the Milky Way" or the "great wonder" of scientific principles, or the majesty of mountains and trees and other things in nature, what are we doing? We are seeing the unity of the many components of time and space that are beyond our full comprehension.

And while I am new to this whole idea of Jewish spirituality, that all sounds like a very Jewish conception to me.

One last comment about Dawkins. He is asked in the interview, "What would you most like to tell people of faith?" He responds:

Be skeptical -- truly examine your faith. Ask yourself if there is evidence for your beliefs.

Well, indeed. And that sounds like wrestling with God. (Do atheists wrestle with their "a-God"? Would that be the same thing?). Dawkins continues:

Reflect on the fact that you are most likely of the faith you happen to have been brought up in, and that if you'd been born into a different faith, you'd be equally fervent about it.

Ah, most likely, but not necessarily!

Twice in as many weeks and two memories

2006-11-11T13:09:00.000-08:00

I could really get used to this. For the second time in as many weeks, I had the pleasure of being called up to the bimah with a group of congregants to receive the priestly benediction. Last Friday night it was to bless those with birthdays or anniversaries coming up in November, but because we October folks got preempted by the High Holidays, we got to be included, too. Then this past Friday night it was part of the welcome of new members to the synagogue. I was impressed by how many new members there are! (I don't really feel like my wife and I are "new" members anymore, given that we have been attending now for almost ten months. One member of the congregation even commented, with an ironic tone, as I walked back to my seat: "You aren't a new member." The entire experience was very welcoming, and I will gladly accept the priestly benediction any time!)

There are not many things from my former days as a (Trying-to-be-) Lutheran that I remember very fondly, but now that I am a (Working-on-becoming-) Jew, two things in particular have connected me to those earlier days. One is the priestly benediction. Back in those days, so many years ago, when I would attend Lutheran services with my mother, I always enjoyed any occasion in which I would get to hear the pastor give someone the benediction. (I like it even better in Hebrew, especially with our cantor's stirring voice!)

The other item from those Lutheran services so long ago that I loved, and that stayed with me even through my years wandering in the spiritual wilderness as a (maybe-but-never-fully-) atheist, was Psalm 23—in particular the line in the middle of the second verse:

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil;

but also the famous opening line:

The Lord is my shepherd...

I am not even sure now, so many years later, what captivated me about this psalm; it is very powerful, but why this and not any other specific passage that I might have heard at various times in my childhood? I do not know. But the most recent experience I had with this psalm was its inclusion in the yizkor service that concluded Sukkot on Shemini Azeret. In the warm and welcoming company of our typically small and intimate (non Bar/Bat-Mitzvah) Saturday morning group of regulars, reciting this passage in memory of those close to us who are no longer on this earth, the impact was intense. I know it was not only the words of the psalm, nor was it only the memory of my mother; it was the two together, because many years ago, when I tried (and failed) to accept my mother's religion, I used to recite this psalm with her. She was very much with me on Shemini Azeret. I sure hope she approves of my becoming a Jew. I am pretty sure she does.

**
Above, I quoted the line, "Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil," which is how I remember it. That's the King James version. However, it is interesting to see the many variations in the translation.

In particular, the new New JPS translation reads:

Though I walk through a valley of deepest darkness,
I fear no harm...

Is that more true to the Hebrew? I must admit, I always felt moved by the imagery of the "valley of the shadow of death." I suppose the New JPS version calls our attention to situations well short of death when things seem hopeless. Compare the Contemporary English Version:

I may walk through valleys
as dark as death,
but I won't be afraid.

In any of these versions, it is a stirring passage, always has been for me, but was especially so on Shemini Azeret.

The Noahide Laws on killing and retribution

2006-10-29T17:38:00.000-08:00

During discussion time at the Torah service on 28 October, one congregant suggested that Genesis 9:5-6 was more consistent with a blanket "thou shall not kill" interpretation than with the more specific "thou shall not murder" in the Noahide laws. There was a lively discussion of the point, and several members noted some apparent contradictions within the weekly portion. The version of the Bible that we use at these discussions is the Modern Commentary of the Reform movement, or "Plaut I." I don't have immediate access to a copy of Plaut I, but I was struck by the difference in the translation of the same passage in Plaut II (the revised edition, published in 2005). I will compare it here with the other version I have at my fingertips, which is the Everett Fox translation. (From memory, the Plaut I is closer to Fox in the word choice, albeit not in the meter and structure, which is very distinctive in Fox--a topic for another day.)

First, Fox:

(5) However, too: for your blood, of your own lives, I will demand satisfaction--
from wild-animals I will demand it,
and from humankind, from every man regarding his brother,
demand-satisfaction for human life.
(6) Whoever now sheds human blood,
shall his blood be shed,
for in God's image he made mankind.

(Note: I am replicating the punctuation and hyphenation used by Fox, but the indentation is a bit different from how it appears in the source.)

Now that I have looked at this more closely, it seems pretty clear that it refers to killing being OK in retribution for another killing. However, some additions to the text in Plaut II seem to have been made to really drive this point home, as we'll see.

Plaut II:

(5) Moreover, for your own bloodguilt I will require your lives; I will require it by means of beasts or by means of human beings--by means of a fellow human being will I require a [guilty] person's life.
(6) The shedder of human blood, /that person's blood shall be shed by [another] human;/ for human beings were made in the image of God.

(Note that the bracketed text and the slashes are in the source that I am quoted; I am not sure what the slashes are supposed to convey.)

This translation, with the addition of the clarification regarding guilt, appears more consistent with an interpretation that any killing is to be sanctioned as retribution for guilt, but certainly not with an interpretation that killing, per se, is prohibited. A commentary in a footnote to this passage says that an important principle of the postdiluvian world is to establish "a legal framework for social compliance" as distinct from the previous era "that perished because of its violence and lawlessness."

Does this mean that killing is OK, but only within a legal framework, in which the one to be killed is guilty? If so, it supports capital punishment (as retribution for murder), but it does not ban killing, per se. Nonetheless, the Plaut II essay on this passage, at p. 75, continues to refer to one of the Noahide laws as "People... shall not kill."

A bit confusing, for sure. But I take away from this the notion that humans are required from this point of the flood onward to figure things out for themselves. That is, there will not be divine intervention every time there is rampant corruption and violence. Rather, we have to learn how to establish the rule of law. Maybe I am looking at this from too much of a political scientist's perspective, but that's clearly an occupational hazard. The idea is: Here are some general, transcendent laws (the Noahide Laws), now go and work it out.

It hardly bears noting that we are still working on it.

Transforming Heshvan

2006-10-27T12:43:00.000-07:00

From the JPost:

Leaders of a host of Jewish organizations, mostly from the Diaspora, called in the Knesset Tuesday for a revision of the traditional Hebrew calendar that would reflect a grassroots push for more worldwide Jewish social action.

These organizations want to transform the Hebrew month of Heshvan, traditionally called Mar [bitter] Heshvan because it is devoid of holidays, into "Social Action Heshvan."

Interfaith and 'call and response'

2006-10-20T15:55:00.000-07:00

Nice post by Rabbi Bachman: "Bring it Back Home." He notes that when he was growing up in Milwaukee his synagogue (Reform) would have annual exchanges with a local African American church, with the pastor and rabbi giving sermons to the other's congregation. He recently participated at his shul in Brooklyn in an ecumenical anti-war religious rally with Jewish, Christian, and Muslim representation in the pulpit. He says we need more of this sort of exchange, to which I can only say amein.*

Rabbi Bachman:

...if I may share a word about my own experience of speaking from the pulpit in a context in which there is every expectation of “call and response,” allow that word to be EXCELLENT.
Jews: you are put on warning. I want more responses, more amens, more “that’s right, Rabbi,” from you all on Shabbos because I’m liking the feel of that. It enlivens the inspirational moments of preaching and brings Sinai down to earth in a way I had never quite experienced before. [my emphasis]

I have not had experience in enough different shuls (yet) to know, but I suppose there is some variance in the extent to which Jewish services have elements of the call and response. There are certainly parts of our services where the "regulars" join in with the cantor even though there is no such indication in the prayer book. But I have noticed an occasional visitor (one Sephardic Jew orignally from Egypt stands out) who will intersperse an amein somewhere where no one else in our congregation does. And I love the sound of that.

On the interfaith theme more generally, I am encouraged by the trial run we gave the new Reform prayer book over the summer. Its authors have incorporated some elements from other traditions as options. I noticed specifically, in the footnotes, that some additions have come from Sufi prayers. Like the African American Christians, but in their own way, the Sufis really know how to get the whole congregation involved! I remember one notable scene in a 'Lonely Planet' TV series when the travellers were at Sufi prayer circle in Syria. I mean a real, moving circle, as in men--only men, alas--locked arm-in-arm and rocking, jumping, praying. It looked like quite a workout, physically as well as spiritually!

One regret I have this month is that, with Ramadan and Rosh Hashanah having coincided this year for the first time in 33 years, the month is about to close and it looks like I will not attend an interfaith iftar (the festive meal that breaks the daily fast).

-----------
* Rabbi Bachman meant more ecumenical/interfaith events, not more antiwar events, though we could use more of those, too, no matter whose war it might be. And yes my words just spoken here in this footnote constitue a reference to the Israeli-Hezbollah war of this past summer, of which I hope to have some personal "Jew in Process" thoughts in another post someday.

Havdalah beer?

2006-10-20T10:59:00.000-07:00

Two weeks ago on the first day of Sukkot, we decided to use something special mark the passing of Shabbat. So, I took out the bottle of Vigneronne Cantillon that I had been keeping in the fridge for several months.

Cantillon is one of the world's premier lambic brewers, which we had the pleasure of touring (tasting included!) when we were in Brussels in 2003. (Lambic is really neither lager nor ale, but a distinct and relatively rare category of beer that can be made only in certain parts of the Brussels region--mainly the Senne valley--as it is open-fermented and relies on local bacteria in the atmosphere only there.)

Of course, I know the blessing over the wine. But if there is a blessing over beer, I have not had the pleasure of learning it yet. The early Israelites' contact with beer might have been rather minimal, and the beer that they might have known would hardly be recognizable to us (no hops, for example). And they certainly would not have known anything like lambic. But beverages that meet the basic definition of beer are know to have existed in Babylonia and other ancient civilizations, including Egypt.

But the Vigneronne Cantillon is practically a wine, anyway. As the Cantillon website explains:

The lambic brewers weren't only established in the Senne valley, but also in the valley of the Yssche . This small river has its spring in the Forêt de Soignes and flows through villages like Hoeilaart, Overijse and Huldenberg. In this valley there used to live many brewers who made delicious lambic.

They didn't add cherries or raspberries [common flavorings for lambic] to their beer, but grapes which had been cultivated in greenhouses. By blending muscat grapes and lambic, the brewers and beer merchants produced the "druivenlambik" (grapes lambic). [...]

The name Vigneronne Cantillon was given in 1987. This name reminds us that, while it belongs to the beer patrimony, the spontaneous fermentation, the ageing in the barrels for several years and the addition of grapes make it a distant cousin of certain white wines.

I did not even notice till after we had finished the bottle what was on the label. It sure does look like a Star of David. Perfect, it is a Jewish lambic after all!

Well, no:

The six-pointed star on our label is an alchemist's symbol. It contains four elements, represented by triangles, of the brewing process. The fire is the symbol of the mashing tun, the earth of the cereals, the air of the yeasts, and the water is the fourth element. At this moment, only a brewer of traditional lambic may use this symbol.

Oh, and no, we did not extinguish a candle in the lambic.

Rain on Hoshanah Rabbah

2006-10-13T13:04:00.000-07:00

Among my better recent investments was that Jewish Calendar 2006. Not only have I learned a lot about artwork and ritual items in the collection of the Jewish Museum of London (which, for some reason, I have never visited), but it also indicates all of the minor (as well as major) holidays and festival dates.

The calendar hangs above my computer, so it's easy to go to the 'net and find out what the meaning of those Hebrew words on a given day is.

13 October is Hoshana Rabba, the seventh day of Sukkot. Given my own interest in agriculture (with many varieties of fruit trees that I tend whenever I can), Sukkot is an especially significant festival to me. Sitting in the sukka for the service last Shabbat, taking in the smells of the (California native) palm fronds that covered the wood frame and that let in filtered sunlight, was a beautiful experience.

But what is Hoshana Rabba? From My Jewish Learning,

According to the Mishnah (Sukkah 4: 5), in Temple times, on the festival of Tabernacles, huge willow branches were placed around the altar and a circuit was made around the altar while the worshippers recited: 'Hoshanah' ('O Lord, deliver us') (Psalms 118: 25). On the basis of this Temple practice, it became the custom on Tabernacles for the worshippers to hold the four species (the palm branch, the etrog [citron], the willows, and the myrtles), and make a circuit around the Bimah [pulpit], while reciting Hoshanah hymns in which God is entreated to deliver His people, especially from famine and drought, since Tabernacles is the festival on which the divine judgment for rain is made.

And guess what? Today or tonight we should be getting our first measurable rainfall of the season. We've had only a few sprinkles so far, and the bulk of the rain may come after sundown. (Our climate is 'Mediterranean' like Israel's, though today's weather in Israel is more like the 'Santa Anas' that we sometimes get around now: It was in the 90s in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, but barely 70 here at its peak.)

The Velveteen Rabbi adds:

Another [ritual] involves greenery: after the reading of a set of piyyutim (liturgical poems), willow branches are beaten against the ground until their leaves come off. I like to read this as a kind of embodied prayer for rain -- the leaves fall like raindrops, symbolizing the sustenance we hope for in the year to come.

At a deeper level,

Some see Hoshanah Rabbah as the culmination of the holiday season that began with Rosh Hashanah, and regard today as the day when judgement is finally passed on who we are and who we aim to be.

The Velveteen Rabbi concludes with what she calls an extemporaneous holiday prayer:

Source of all that is! Help us tap into Your sustenance in the coming year. Shower us with mayimei chayyim, living waters, in all four worlds. In the world of actions and physicality, give us real water to irrigate with and to drink. In the world of emotions, let our hearts move us as mighty currents move the seas. In the world of thought, let our minds be as clean and clear as the purest waters. And in the world of essence, let us truly know ourselves as beings mostly made of water, sustained by Your ineffable wellspring in all that we do.

And let us say, amein.

(Her references in the prayer to "four worlds" and "made of water" contain links to explanatory pages. I highly recommend her blog, and she has another terrific post on Sukkot that is well worth a read: "Me'or Eynayim on the hidden meaning of Sukkot")

This has been an especially interesting year in which to experience my first High Holidays. Rosh Hashanah began this year on Shabbat, which was also the precise day of the autumnal equinox. That meant that the first day of Sukkot was also on Shabbat. We had a very light brief rain shower the Friday afternoon before Sukkot (not enough to measure in the rain gauge) and then it was perfectly clear and cool for the Erev Sukkot service, allowing our full appreciation of the full moon. And now rain is coming as Sukkot, and Hoshanah Rabbah, come to a close.

Welcome to Ararat Scrolls

2006-10-07T17:11:00.000-07:00

This post serves as the introduction to a new blog, Ararat Scrolls. It is a semi-anonymous blog maintained by a professor taking the Introduction to Judaism course. It will serve a public journal, and anyone interested in Judaism who happens to come by (including, I hope, others in the course) is welcome to comment.

At some point I promise to explain the name I gave this blog (and also the name I am posting under, zed).

But right now, I am distracted by another "religion": postseason baseball. (Congratulations, Tigers!!)