Shir Chadash : : Conservative Congregation : : Metairie, LA

Israel on the TV

Posted on February 10, 2012 by Rabbi Linden

Alyssa Rosenberg, a culture blogger at Think Progress, notes that Israeli television is becoming quite a source for American popular culture:

The Hollywood Reporter notes that New Regency’s just signed a deal that lets it have first crack at content coming out of one of Israel’s biggest production companies. Israeli shows are never going to translate directly the way British ones do—you can’t just slap a Hebrew-language show on PBS or Hulu and expect that it’ll find a well-established audience like the one that’s willing to give almost any BBC content a shot. But Israeli shows have been the basis for programs like In Treatment, part of the second wave of well-regarded HBO shows, Homeland, which is helping Showtime steal a match on HBO, and Who’s Still Standing?, an NBC quiz show that’s helping the struggling network fill hours.

Of course, this type of thing also goes the other way: when we were living in Israel several years ago, my wife and I became a little bit obsessed with a show called HaShagrir, which literally means “The Ambassador”. The show was based on The Apprentice, but in true Israeli style, the winner, rather than getting a job with Donald Trump, was sent to America as a goodwill ambassador for a year. For America, the obsession is money and jobs, so that’s what the big winner gets, in Israel, the obsession is what other people think of Israel, so the big winner gets to go to New York and set up concerts for Israeli bands. (Back in New York, Liba and I attended a concert thrown by the organization employing The Ambassador, and when we saw him, we had that peculiar feeling like we knew him so well, even though, of course, we didn’t. Reality TV isn’t any more real in Israel than it is here.)

Rosenberg has another point: unlike British television, Israeli shows are not simply rebroadcast here. The ideas, characters, and settings are Americanized, so what we end up watching is not so much Israeli pop culture as the American reimagining of Israeli ideas. Not that there is anything wrong with that (I’ve heard great things about Homeland) but I think Rosenberg’s point here is great:

In a sense, I regret that we’re really only going to be able to remake Israeli shows rather than rebroadcasting them directly. Our national conversation about Israel is bigger than this, but it might be healthy to keep the setting so audiences here can see the country the same way we see England: as an ally, a place of both great natural beauty and sometimes-prosaic urban design, where some people are involved in existential struggles against security threats and others are consumed with the prosaic business of everyday life and everyday jobs.

That seems absolutely right to me. And here is my first suggestion for a direct rebroadcast: Srugim, a show about young religious Jewish Israelis trying to work out how to live within the strictures of Jewish law and still live a fully modern life . I have not been able to watch the show, but I’ve heard good things about it, and this sort of everyday struggle with life, love, Jewish law, and the sometimes difficult situation in Israel is exactly the sort of thing Rosenberg is talking about. C’mon NBC, bring it to America! What do you have to lose? Hardly anybody watches your network anyway!

Posted in Israel, Popular Culture | 1 Comment

A Year Without Football

Posted on February 7, 2012 by Rabbi Linden

At the start of this year’s professional football season, I decided that, given the information of the serious nature of head injuries caused by the normal play of the game, I would do without football for the year. My thinking was basically this: I refrain from watching boxing or ultimate fighting on the basis that I do not want to be a party—in any way—to entertainment that requires the physical destruction of its participants. Now, I recognize that all professional (and college) sports, requires some level of physical hardships for the players, especially in their later years, but the brain injuries resulting from boxing and the like seemed to me a bridge too far. After doing some reading on football, I began to feel as though the sport fell into the boxing and ultimate fighting category, in the sense of the natural state of the game all but requiring serious and lasting injuries to those who play it. (Hockey fighting, as I noted before on the blog, is the same problem, though hockey can—and in many places, does—be played without the fighting the NHL allows.) Now, at the end of this season of trial abstention, I have some thoughts.

First, it was virtually impossible to ignore football. Though this was not really my goal, what I noticed is that reasons both external and internal made it basically unthinkable that I would not, in some small ways, follow football. So while it is true that I did not watch a down of football this season, I knew what was happening in the league, I knew who the best teams and players were, and I basically followed the Steelers and Saints, the two team I care about. (I also sort of followed the Bills, but more out of morbid curiosity than anything else.) The internal reason for this is that I found it difficult to simply turn off my interest in football. Baseball, not football, was the big sport in my house growing up, but after I left Pittsburgh I found that one of the ways I could stay connected to the city was by following the Steelers, ironically far more closely than I ever did while living in Pittsburgh. Football is—relative to baseball—easy to follow, partly because there are more nationally broadcast Steelers’ games than Pirates’ game. Also, as previously noted on this blog, the Pirates have been terrible for twenty years, so following them is more of a punishment for my sins than an act of hometown fidelity. In any case, I have followed the Steelers’ more or less closely for nearly fifteen years, and it was not easy to pretend I didn’t care what happened to the team. I found myself sneaking peaks at the score on my phone—an act that felt a little like cheating, but not so much like cheating that I stopped. I was disappointed when they lost in the playoffs, and not only because it proved definitively that God likes Tim Tebow more than he does Ben Roethlisberger. Which, when you think about it, should not really be that surprising.

The external reason for my inability to really ignore football was that I live in an absolutely football crazy town. So crazy in fact, that the front page story of the Times-Picayune today was about the city hosting next year’s Super Bowl. For the entirety of football season—and beyond—the Saints are the story of the city. It is difficult to really be a part of the culture here without some ability to talk football, and that is especially so for someone like me, who cannot, or will not, take part in other essential parts of New Orleans, like the food or the bead-throwing. So in some ways, my not having paid much attention to the Saints harmed my ability to feel a part of the life of the city, and that I did not like.

On the other hand, I did like how much time not watching football put back into my schedule. I certainly had more time to spend with the family, to be outside, and waste my time watching The Walking Dead on Netflix. I also felt, in the main, good about my decision not to watch football. Given what we now know about the damage being caused to the players involved, it would have been hard for me to fully enjoy the experience in the same way as I had in the past. This is so, by the way, regardless of the fact that the players have freely chosen to play, and it will continue to be true as the information about head injuries becomes more widely known and we can make the claim that 1) the players choose to play and 2) they know the risks. Number 1) is certainly true, and soon number 2) will be true as well. But this will not change the fact that I am getting enjoyment (and potentially spending money on) the slow destruction of the brains of these players. After all, boxers choose the box, and they certainly know the risks. That is their right, and I would not take it away. But I am not interested in that sort of entertainment. The only question for me is whether football fits into that category as opposed to say, baseball or basketball. As of now, I still believe that is does, and so it might be another year without football. Maybe I’ll even be able to really not care, as opposed to just saying I don’t. That, in the end, is the hard part.

Posted in Rabbi Thoughts | 3 Comments

Year of Living Dangerously (And the Bible)

Posted on February 2, 2012 by Rabbi Linden

This story was sent to me by an alert reader (thanks, Dad!) about my home state of Pennsylvania. The Pennsylvania House of Representatives, apparently with nothing much else to do, passed the following resolution (unanimously!) last week:

RESOLVED, That the House of Representatives declare 2012 as the “Year of the Bible” in Pennsylvania in recognition of both the formative influence of the Bible on our Commonwealth and nation and our national need to study and apply the teachings of the holy scriptures.

Where does one begin? How about the same place the Bible begins, at the beginning, with the first ‘whereas’ clause in the resolution, which is, to my mind, where things really start to go wrong.

WHEREAS, The Bible, the word of God, has made a unique contribution in shaping the United States as a distinctive and blessed nation and people;

First of all, if the Bible is word of God, then I have to say the Pennsylvania House of Representatives has a lot of work to do, since there are many, many things that are legal in the state of Pennsylvania that are expressly forbidden in that little book of God’s word. Also, we need to get some people trained in stoning, because that’s going to be a bit of a growth industry. Adultery, among other sins, is going to take a serious hit. Literally. On the other hand, widows, orphans and strangers will probably do a bit better than they’ve currently been doing. On the other, other hand, college football fans (or professional football fans, depending on how we interpret what day the Sabbath is) are going to be mighty disappointed when all work (including football) becomes an offense punishable by death. I mean, if you can’t even gather sticks, according to God’s word (Numbers 15:32-36), I don’t think we’ll really be able to make an exception for a billion dollar business like football. To be fair, the PA legistalture, in their unanimous wisdom, seems to understand this problem, which is why they add this little escape valve ‘whereas’ clause:

WHEREAS, The history of our country clearly illustrates the value of voluntarily applying the teachings of the scriptures in the lives of individuals, families and societies;

You see, here’s the problem: either the Bible is the word of God, and therefore unerring and certainly (at least according to the Bible) obligatory, or, it’s really not, and therefore more like a voluntary thing. I think you can’t really have it both ways. You can’t call something the “word of God” and then make it voluntary. It’s either an exact record of what God wants, and therefore something we should really force people to uphold, or, it’s not. Pick a side PA House of Representatives: do you love God’s word or not?

Finally, the theologian in me needed a break from this freak out, so the historian in me got all riled up over this clause:

WHEREAS, This nation now faces great challenges that will test it as it has never been tested before

No, no, no, no and no. That is simply false. In 1812, the British burned Washington, D.C. That was fairly serious. Throughout the entire first hundred or so years of the nation’s history, people could be legally owned by other people, then we fought a devastating war over that issue. Over 600,000 Americans died in that war. That was pretty challenging. Then we had a Great Depression, a World War that saw the forces of fascism nearly conquer Europe and then we had a rather unfortunate and lethal adventure in South East Asia. During the first half of the last century, people were routinely beaten and killed because they had the temerity to do things like register to vote. Oh, and the entire world almost blew up in the early 1960s during an atomic face-off with the Soviets. And really, that’s just for starters. So no, Pennsylvania House of Representatives, we are not being tested as we never have before. To even suggest such a thing is absurd on its face, and makes me think that the real test was for the voters of the state of Pennsylvania, and they flunked.

Posted in Current Events, Religion in America | Tagged bible, craziness | Leave a comment

Yes, But Is It Kosher?

Posted on February 2, 2012 by Rabbi Linden

The Forward has a disturbing article about the way some kosher certifying agencies are using the proceeds of their supervision:

Badatz Yerushalayim is one of the most respected kosher supervisions in the world. Unlike other hekhshers, the presence of its symbol on a product allows that product to be consumed by even the most ultra-Orthodox kosher consumer. And that is why the Badatz Yerushalayim symbol appears on many Israeli food products exported to the United States. Badatz Yerushalayim is part of Edah HaCharedis, Israel’s old-line, stridently anti-Zionist ultra-Orthodox community, based in the Mea Shearim neighborhood of Jerusalem. Edah considers itself to be the continuation of the fervently Orthodox Ashkenazi Jews who moved to Palestine from Eastern Europe in the late 1700s and founded Jerusalem’s Ashkenazi community. Edah is made up of distinct Hasidic sects, like Satmar, Dushinsky and Toldos Aharon, along with such non-Hasidic ultra-Orthodox groups as the Perushim and Brisk. They’re bound together by vehement opposition to the modern State of Israel…

On January 15, five senior Edah activists were arrested in Jerusalem on charges of money laundering, tax evasion and embezzlement. The crimes were allegedly carried out using Edah’s national committee offices and using bank accounts in names of Edah charities meant to help widows, orphans and the poor. According to a report published on the ultra-Orthodox news website Yeshiva World News, police told the magistrate’s court that money these Edah activists allegedly laundered was used to fund the Sicarii gang, the violent ultra-Orthodox thugs who lead riots against police and who extort non-Edah businesses. The Sicarii also serve as Edah’s unofficial modesty police, attacking women and girls whom they deem to be immodestly dressed or who refuse to move to the back of the bus. Laundered money was allegedly given to the gang to pay for the logistics of violent street demonstrations and attacks on stores and other businesses that did not meet with Edah’s approval. Edah also allegedly paid the living expenses of Sicarii members and their families. Proceeds from Badatz Yerushalayim fund a significant part of Edah’s operations — including, reportedly some of those payments to the Sicarii.

Yikes! The issue of where the money goes in kashrut certification is a serious one, and it is difficult to know exactly how to deal with it. What, for example, does the Orthodox Union do with all the money it makes certifying products? I assume it’s nothing as odious as the charges being made here. But they are certainly using that money to further ends for their organization, some of which may run afoul of the sorts of things I would want my money being used for.

In many ways, this is just a new costume for an old problem: spending money for certain products from companies that may use that money in ways—political or otherwise—that I find troubling. I never thought about it too much in the case of kashrut agencies, but, if this article is correct, I may need to check my hechshers more carefully.

Posted in Current Events, Jewish Thought | Tagged kashrut | 4 Comments

Israel Good News

Posted on January 27, 2012 by Rabbi Linden

I think that sometimes on this blog I tend towards the difficult Israel news, and I am trying to correct that. Here is some great news:

A group of leaders from North America’s Conservative (Masorti) Movement held a joint prayer for men and women at the Knesset synagogue on Tuesday, where prayers are usually held according to the Orthodox custom.

Good for Masorti and for the Masorti Foundation which helped arrange the event! Some day, I hope not too far in the future, we will see more pictures like this from the Knesset.

We need more of these, mostly to combat foolishness like this, from Shas Party Member of Knesset Nissim Zeev:

“Thank God, Israel doesn’t have many communities of this kind, which sow the rift among the people of Israel,” he said. “But when they arrive, you can’t prevent them from doing so in a public place like the Knesset.”

And, I would add, you shouldn’t be able to stop us from doing it in a public place like the Kotel either, but I promised this would be a good news post. So here’s the good news: Masorti Judaism is growing in Israel, and it’s getting stronger, and I believe, I really, truly believe, that the sort of Judaism Masorti represents can and will have a profound impact on the Israel of future.

And if that turns out to be true, it will be very, very good news.

Posted in Conservative Judaism, Israel | Tagged israel, masorti, religious pluralism | 1 Comment

A Movie Moses We Can Believe In

Posted on January 26, 2012 by Rabbi Linden

I guess if you have to make a movie about Moses, it makes some sense to have Steven Spielberg direct it. But I have to say, this description of the Moses movie is not at all heartening:

Steven Spielberg is near to etching in stone with Warner Bros on that biopic portraying the Jewish leader as the warrior to beat all warriors. With a working title of Gods And Kings, what’s envisioned is “a movie like a Braveheart-ish version of the Moses story,” an insider tells us. “Him coming down the river, being adopted, leaving his home, forming an army, and getting the Ten Commandments.”

Now, I know about the “coming down the river”, and I think I read somewhere about “being adopted” and “leaving his home,” and yes, he does receive the Ten Commandments from God. But when, pray tell, does Moses– excuse me General Moses–“form an army”? There are battles in the Torah of course: Amalek does some fighting, the people exact revenge on the Midianites/Moabites, and of course there is the disastrous attempt to march up to Canaan against God’s explicit instructions. But, here’s the thing: Moses does not “form an army.” The people are more a chaotic rabble than anything else. The people win their battles when God is with them, and they lose when God is not. That’s kinda, sorta the point of the whole book. That said, there is a great character story to be told about Moses, and you could do it without turning him into some sort of Israelite William Wallace, or, like DeMille’s The Ten Commandments did, turning him into a verse spouting Bible figurine. Here then, are my humble suggestions for creating a Moses bio-pic:

*Instead of assuming Moses as a young man does not know of his Israelite heritage, as Demille and the animated Prince of Egypt do, assume the opposite: that he knows he is an Israelite and does not care. After all, when the daughter of Pharaoh pulls him from the water, she exclaims, “This must be a Hebrew child.” Instead of asking how Moses found out about his true heritage, which is not that interesting a question from a character development stand-point, assuming that Moses knows he is an Israelite allows us to ask: “Why doesn’t he care? And when does he start caring?” That’s interesting.

*Take Moses’ unwillingness to lead seriously. Much of Moses early interactions with God are about not wanting to take on the role God has assigned to him. And throughout the wandering in the desert Moses often questions his role and his efficacy. Moses’ uncertainty is part of what makes him human, and a human being struggling with where his life has taken him is far more interesting to watch than a God-besotted automaton, which is what I think Charlton Heston was going for from the moment his Moses meets God at the burning bush.

*Give some space to other figures like Aaron and Miriam. Aaron is a critical part of Moses conflict with Pharaoh, and he is a critical figure in the entire narrative of the Exodus. Miriam is less well-drawn in the Torah narrative, but surely there is a way to take what little we know of her and create a strong female character, albeit one constrained by the patriarchal realities of her time.

*Humanize some of Moses’ Israelite foes. One of the great things about the conflict between Moses and Korach in Numbers 16 is just how convincing Korach’s arguments seem to be. Instead of assuming he is an evil cackling villain (like Edgar G. Robinson’s version in The Ten Commandments) let Korach have some humanity. Maybe he really is concerned about the future of the people; maybe he really does see a lack in Moses’ leadership. The story of the spies is another opportunity to create complex and interesting conflict: perhaps the spies are not evil so much as they are realistic. This sort of conflict is far more interesting than a simple Good versus Evil.

*Don’t shy away from the tragic nature of Moses’ story. In the end, Moses does not enter the Promised Land, though he very much wants to do so. He pleads with God to rescind the decree that he will die before the land, but God refuses. It is one of the great questions of the Torah why this should be so. A great Moses movie would try to answer this question, and would give us a Moses who desperately wants the thing that, in the end, he simple cannot have.

Posted in Popular Culture, Rabbi Thoughts | Tagged Ethan's great ideas, moses, movies | 2 Comments

So You Say You Want a Revolution

Posted on January 25, 2012 by Rabbi Linden

Let me begin by saying that I love Limmud. I support Limmud here in New Orleans, and I think it’s a great thing.

It is not, however, the salvation of the Jewish people. David Hazony seems to disagree however:

What if something came along that threatened to permanently dislodge the federations and foundations, with their fetes and fiscal décolletage, as the bookends holding up our sense of collective self, and put the core of Jewish identity back where it was always meant to be — in direct engagement with content?

I’m talking about Limmud.

Apparently, Limmud is the solution to the problem of declining Jewish life in the Diaspora. Somehow, the two or three or four days of learning will revolutionize Jewish life. Actually, Hazony knows why:

There are a few unstated principles that make Limmud glow. One is that the mind and the spirit, the body and the soul, are one. Social, religious and intellectual stimuli are mixed inseparably.

Honestly, I am not even sure what that means. But whatever it means, Hazony likes it:

In addition to the classes going on, there is a cavernous, cacophonous central commons filled with hundreds of chairs and tables and couches for the never-ending conversations that Limmud triggers. During the day, coffee and cookies and live jazz flow freely. At night, beer on tap and harder stuff transform it into an English pub.

Oh, I see. It’s about Jewish conversations and music and alcohol. Why didn’t every Jewish organization in the world think of that? Nobody’s ever tried that before! But wait, there’s more:

Second, your place of work does not appear on your nametag. Neither do markers of formal hierarchy of knowledge, like “professor” and “rabbi.” This is because Limmud’s conceivers have realized that by developing a deferential rather than a creative atmosphere, such titles can encourage other people to plead ignorance rather than cure it by taking their learning into their own hands.

Right. So no one knows more than anyone else, less we be “deferential” to those who might, you know, but experts at something. This is, I think, rather hogwashy, to use a term I just made up, since you know, there’s no one to tell me I can’t. The point is, a good teacher can make a class feel open for discussion without relinquishing the possibility that he or she knows more than the students, and has something to teach them. On the other hand, it doesn’t take a professor, rabbi or cantor to be condescending and pretentious. Those qualities can be found even without “your place of work” appearing on your name tag.

Finally, Hazony loves the non-professionalism of the whole experience:

And the third, and perhaps most beguiling, principle: There are almost no professional Limmudniks. While the international Limmud body’s paid staff is minimal, the volunteers run the conference almost exclusively.

Here I think he has a point, but it’s hardly revolutionary. Volunteers are the backbone of any well-run Jewish organization, and they are critical to its success. It’s true that costs can be kept down, which is great, but it’s hard to run something totally as a volunteer endeavor. Also, there’s nothing wrong with professionals. Really. It’s not some terrible thing to pay people to help build and develop Jewish life. Heck, that might even be a priority, the sort of thing we want to pay for. The sort of thing a Jewish community should be happy to support.

My biggest problem with this article though, is that it ignores the many Jews who don’t live in London, New York, or L.A. Yes, New Orleans has a Limmud, but there is simply no way Limmud could ever be a sustainable “identity.” It’s one and a half days long, once every two years. If Limmud is your identity, well, I’d say that’s not going to save the Jewish people. It may be that in places like L.A. and New York this marvelous Limmud spirit could morph into something lasting and regular, but in smaller places, I think communities are going to find they need things like professionals, and infrastructure, and even…gasp…experts, to help things along. There is nothing wrong with working, in a professional capacity, for the betterment and education of the Jewish people. We might even want to say it’s admirable. If, as Hazony predicts, this revolution of Limmud is intent on making that choice seem ridiculous, then, as a greater man than I once said, “don’t you know that you can count me out.”

Posted in Jewish Thought, Jewish world, Religion in America | Tagged community, jewish learning, limmud | 4 Comments

Heroes and Antiheroes

Posted on January 24, 2012 by Rabbi Linden

Regular readers of this blog (all six of you!) know that I am a big fan of Friday Night Lights, the television show and the book, not the movie. In fact, I am such a big fan, that I have recently been—in my copious spare time—rewatching the first season of the show. And something that has really struck me as I revisit the stories and the characters is how different this show is from the television I usually enjoy.

Put simply, I love a good antihero. This is lucky for me, because the antihero has been a staple of great television for awhile now. Tony Soprano of The Sopranos, Vic Mackey of The Shield, Walter White of Breaking Bad, Stinger Bell and Omar Little from The Wire. These are, to some extent or another, bad men. They are sometimes noble, they are sometimes kind and good, but mostly they are not the sorts of people we hold up as models of good behavior. In the hands of good writers and in the services of interesting stories, that is what makes them exceptionally interesting characters.

But when I think about why I love Friday Night Lights, it’s pretty much the opposite. Every major character on the show is, basically, a good person. They all make mistakes of course (because nothing in more boring than a story about perfect people being perfect) but for the most part, their intentions are good. And the show goes out of its way to redeem people. There are no antiheroes on Friday Night Lights, instead, the characters are how we often want to see ourselves: basically good people who sometimes err but always find the way back.

In this way, Friday Night Lights is a lot like another favorite show of mine, The West Wing. Nobody on The West Wing was evil; again, the show went out of its way to give everyone a chance to be right, and to be noble. The Republicans that were often the foes of the Bartlet White House were, for the most part, given a chance to explain their positions, and they were rarely portrayed as hacks or as soulless politicians. Everyone on The West Wing was smart and thoughtful, and though they sometimes made bad choices, they were all fundamentally good. Again: this was how I wanted politics to look, and also how I like to see myself. I enjoy watching antiheroes, but I don’t want to be one.

Posted in Rabbi Thoughts | Leave a comment

Pro-Israel in a Moment

Posted on January 24, 2012 by Rabbi Linden

I have been very impressed with Moment magazine of late. I lost touch with Moment some time about a decade ago, thinking of it as a not particularly interesting Jewish monthly. But recently I started reading it again, and, as my brother-in-law correctly put it, Moment is trying to be the Jewish New Yorker. Well, I love Jewish and I love New Yorker, so for me, it works.

This month Moment has a long feature called “What Does it Mean to Be Pro-Israel Today?” The ranger of people answering the question is impressive, everyone from Caroline Glick, the ferociously right-wing Jerusalem Post columnist to George Bisharat, a former legal consultant to the Palestinian Authority. Needless to say, these folks disagree on the meaning of Pro-Israel. As do Martin Peretz, Michael Lerner, Morton Klein, Jeremy Ben-Ami among others. In many ways, the most exciting part of the piece is the sheer multiplicity of views on the topic.

But what’s tough about the topic is the nagging question about this multiplicity: is Pro-Israel an exclusive category? That is, if one does not meet, say Caroline Glick’s definition, or Jeremy Ben-Ami’s definition, is that person anti-Israel? Would Jeremy Ben-Ami call Caroline Click anti-Israel, and would she return the favor? I suspect the answer is yes. And herein sits the problem: there does not seem to be a reliable center-space for people to agree is “Pro-Israel” before the inevitable disagreements begin. Does simply believing Israel has a right to exist make one Pro-Israel? I think both Glick and Ben-Ami would say no: one needs to have stronger feelings and opinions than that. That is, one needs to really grapple with the situation in which Israel finds itself, and one needs to form opinions about that situation. And then, I think many in the Moment piece would say: you need to come to the proper conclusions.

Another things worth noting is that the basically right-wing responses almost exclusively focus on external pressures to Israel, on the dangers the state faces from outside its borders. Morton Klein’s response is typical in this regard:

There is a difference between being pro-Israel 30 or 40 years ago and now because of the significant reduction in support for Israel around the world, and the country’s demonization by groups that promote lies against Israel, such as calling it a Nazi or apartheid state. For me, being pro-Israel means getting the truth out by being more active, calling radio shows, writing newspapers, lobbying Congress and even lobbying our rabbis. The goal of the Arab state is the destruction of Israel, not only the establishment of a Palestinian state. We should make clear to our Jewish leaders the importance of speaking out about hatred and violence against Jews and Israel in Arab schools, media and speeches.

For those on the right, the danger can be Iran, terrorism, on the creeping danger of international delegitimization, but the focus is the same: from the outside in.

On the other hand, the left-wing responses tended to focus on issues internal to the State. Take Eric Alterman’s answer:

Israel was founded in a state of crisis and has been in a state of crisis ever since. The result has been to deny equal rights first to its Arab minority, then, far more egregiously, to those people it has occupied since 1967, and most recently to Jews themselves through a host of anti-democratic laws either recently passed or about to be. We “lovers of Zion” should have helped Israel rid itself of these unhealthy albatrosses. Instead, under the “pro-Israel” mantle, traditional American Jewish organizations, as well as conservative Christian ones, focus exclusively on external threats and have encouraged these destructive tendencies, helping empower those who would make them permanent. And they’ve done so, necessarily, at the expense of Israel’s democracy and its standing in the world as a nation that lives according to its values. Those of us who believe in the values of the founding and necessity of the state, need to resist the urge to be yes-men and -women and face up to the bad habits created by Israel’s long-term state of emergency. These habits are now the greatest threat to Israel, greater than Hamas or Hezbollah or any other external enemy. If recent unfortunate trends continue, Israel may not have much of a democracy left to defend, nor much of connection to secular diaspora Jewry to help fight for it.

For Alterman, the real threats are internal: the destruction of Israeli democracy, the loss of “values”, all brought about by a host of forces.

In this sense, the right and the left aren’t really talking to each other. They look at Israel and see vastly different things. Those on the right see serious existential threats to Israel from enemies who seek its physical destruction, whereas those on the right see serious existential threats to Israel from those internal to the State (aided and abetted by those outside) who do not wish it to be a free, modern State. The one thing everyone agrees on is that the situation is fairly dire. They just can’t agree on what makes it dire.

Maybe it is precisely this inability to agree that makes situation dire.

Posted in Israel | Leave a comment

Things I’ll Never Have, but Would be Cool

Posted on January 12, 2012 by Rabbi Linden

Behold, the greatest pulpit ever:

My question is: which is the more important item on the pulpit: iPad or Bible?

Thanks to Will for sending this bit of genius along. Indeed, this is so cool I may have to reconsider my current position regarding iPads on Shabbat. Not that I have an iPad, but if I did, I would clearly also need a pulpit like this.

Posted in Humor | Leave a comment

Heschel, King and Moral Grandeur

Posted on January 12, 2012 by Rabbi Linden

Normally, I don’t post my weekly e-mail messages on the blog, but I figured, this week, given the occasion, I would do so. If you want to receive our weekly e-mail, by the way, just send the office an e-mail and let them know.

By odd historical and calendarical coincidence, this weekend celebrating and commemorating the life of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. happens to fall at the end of a week that also contains both the Gregorian birthday (January 11^th) and the Hebrew yahrzeit (18 Tevet) of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel. Rabbi Heschel was among the most prominent rabbis to work and walk with King, and his legacy in America, and in Conservative Judaism, is bound up inexorably in his decision to become involved in the Civil Rights Movement. He famously joined with Dr. King in the 1965 civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery, and he spoke often of the moral imperatives of Civil Rights. At a 1963 gathering in Chicago called the Conference on Religion and Race—the first time Rabbi Heschel met Dr. King—Rabbi Heschel explicitly linked the Civil Rights Movement in America to the founding story of Jewish Freedom: “At the first conference on religion and race, the main participants were Pharaoh and Moses. Moses’ words were: ‘Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, let my people go that they may celebrate a feast to me.’ While Pharaoh retorted: “Who is the Lord, that I should heed this voice and let Israel go? I do not know the Lord, and moreover I will not let Israel go.” The outcome of that summit meeting has not yet come to an end. Pharaoh is not ready to capitulate. The exodus began, but is far from having been completed. In fact, it was easier for the children of Israel to cross the Red Sea than for a Negro to cross certain university campuses.” The link between the biblical Exodus and the experience of African-Americans in America was not new in 1965 (indeed it had deep and old roots among African-Americans) but its invocation by a prominent rabbi who looked the part of an old world sage helped move the connection into the conscious of white America.

For both Rabbi Heschel and Dr. King, the voices of the biblical prophets loomed over their lives. Rabbi Heschel’s first major written work was about the prophets, and Dr. King constantly cited what he called Old Testament Prophets, most famously in his 1963 speech during the March on Washington, when Dr. King, declared, quoting the prophet Amos (5:4), “No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream.” Later in the speech, alluding the prophet Isaiah (40:4-5), Dr. King imagined a more perfect union, a more perfect future: “I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight; and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together.” Rabbi Heschel certainly understood the clarion call Dr. King heard from the early Israelite rabble rousers. In his book on the prophets, Rabbi Heschel wrote, “The prophet is human, yet he employs notes on octave too high for our ears…Often his words begin to burn where conscience ends.” When Rabbi Heschel heard Dr. King speak, he heard the voice of an American prophet, his words burning in the spaces our nation’s conscience had not yet reached.

In March of 1968, shortly before his murder, Dr. King appeared at the Rabbinical Assembly annual meeting, the keynote speaker to honor Rabbi Heschel on his birthday. The gathering of Conservative Rabbis, moved by Dr. King, moved by Rabbi Heschel, greeted their guest by singing “We Shall Overcome”. That in itself was extraordinary, a statement of support for the aims and vision of Civil Rights. But these rabbis, inspired not just by Dr. King and his ideas, but also by Rabbi Heschel and his deeply Jewish approach to morality, sang the great Movement song not in English, but in Hebrew. And that, it seems to me, is our challenge: to sing the songs of freedom and justice in our language, to interact with, and influence the world around us in a Jewish way. To speak, as Rabbi Heschel did, to the most pressing moral issues of our time, in the language of our unique history, our unique traditions, the unique experience of our peoplehood. Rabbi Heschel did not abandon his traditional life, nor his deep learning, to join take part in the great historical forces shaping America in his lifetime; on the contrary: he harnessed that life, and that learning, and yoked them—fatefully and irrevocably—to the difficult and halting attempt to make the world more just, and more righteous. “The work of righteousness will be peace,” says Isaiah (32:17), and, as with most words of the prophets, both ancient and contemporary, these words are not so much an account of the future that will be, as a promise of future that, through the holy work of our hands, may someday come to be.

Posted in Conservative Judaism, Current Events, Holidays | Tagged civil rights, heschel, king, social action | Leave a comment

The Problem of Prisoner Swaps

Posted on January 6, 2012 by Rabbi Linden

Despite the near-euphoria in Israel and the wider Jewish world when Gilad Shalit returned to his family, there was, alongside the joy, a clear sense that the price for his safe return had been quite high. The danger, of course, is that the large number of prisoners released by Israel constituted an incentivizing of the sort of operation that led the death of Israeli soldiers and the capture of Gilad Shalit. When terrorists get what they want, the thinking goes, there will be more terror.

That concern is clearly motivating the latest rethinking of the problem in Israel:

Israel, which recently traded 1,027 Palestinian prisoners for one soldier held by Hamas, is planning on establishing rules that would prevent it from making such a lopsided exchange in the future, Defense Minister Ehud Barak said on Thursday.

Interviewed on Israel Radio, Mr. Barak was asked about a classified report submitted to him on guidelines for handling negotiations regarding abducted soldiers. The interviewer asked whether the rules were expected to be made stricter so it would “no longer be 1,000 terrorists for one soldier.”

“I believe that will be the conclusion,” Mr. Barak said. “There is no choice. We have to change the rules fundamentally to protect the state’s overall interests.”

The goal here is signaling: Israel is letting terror groups like Hamas and Hizbollah know that they cannot expect the sort of spectacular deal their received in exchange for Gilad Shalit. The question is whether Israel’s enemies will believe the truth of the signal. After all, in the event (God forbid) of another captured soldier, the same sorts of pressures that existed in the Shalit case will exist in the new case. There will once again be a bereft family, there will once again be a sense of outrage and shame, and there will once again be the sense that to bring home a live Israeli solider to his or her family is the greatest imperative. I see that Minister Barak is trying to preempt that sort of situation, but there seems to be no reason that, whatever the law, the sort of long-term pressure the Shalit family was able to bring to bear won’t simply be repeated in any new prisoner situation.

Posted in Current Events, Israel | Leave a comment

Marriage Equity

Posted on January 6, 2012 by Rabbi Linden

No, not in the United States. In Israel. It seems the Chief Ashkenazi Rabbi of Israel, Yona Metzger, is not a fan of a bill making itself way through the Knesset.

Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi Yona Metzger on Thursday contacted all 120 MKs and urged them to reject a Knesset bill that would grant couples the freedom to choose the rabbinate office where they marry.

The situation in Israel now is that Jewish couples who wish to be married may only do so by registering with the rabbinate office in their place of residence. This is a problem because the rules, regulations and, well, kindness of the rabbis vary fairly widely. This bill would allow people, in essence, to choose the rabbis for their wedding. Shocking, right? We can see how this would be a serious problem.

Metzger characterized the legislation, which would amend the Marriage Law, as potentially disastrous. He said it would result in the birth of children who were deemed “mamzerim” under Jewish religious law, a status that limits their right to marry other Jews.

“I am contacting you with an emotional plea,” Metzger wrote, “out of a deep concern for the wholeness and unity of our people.” He invited the MKs to meet with him individually, and wrote that there were other changes that could be made to the marriage registration in what he called a “controlled and responsible manner.”

Mamzerim is the “fire” in a crowded theater go-to whenever this issue comes up, along with a the “wholeness and unity of the people.” But it’s not clear to me what Rabbi Metzger is so concerned about: couples will still be required to get married through the Rabbanut, and only Orthodox rabbis recognized by the rabbanut will be able to marry them. Why should it matter if they want to choose their own Orthodox rabbi?

The answer lies in the (unofficial) name of the bill: The Tzohar Bill. Tzohar is an organization of Modern Orthodox rabbis who have been trying to bring a more modern perspective to the wedding process in Israel. They are, I am certain, not in the business of creating mamzers. But the true legitimization of any non-Haredi position is dangerous for the Rabbanut, and the possibility that people will be given any choice in their marriage plans seems to terrify the powers-that-be. After all, if a rabbi can perform a wedding that is more modern and receptive to the needs and desires of the couple, is it not possible that a non-Orthodox rabbi could (gasp!) perform a wedding as well? Perhaps we could throw the whole system over and simply have a civil marriage system in Israel, so people can make their own decisions about how to get married, and how to represent themselves and their traditions at their wedding!

Nah, that would be crazy.

Posted in Israel | Tagged haredi, israel, marriage, rabbanut | Leave a comment

The Core Value

Posted on January 5, 2012 by Rabbi Linden

I appreciate Rabbi Shmuley Boteach’s broadside against recent Ultra-Orthodox misbehavior in Israel. He is certainly right about this:

Religious extremism festers when decent lay people are cowed into submission by fanatics whom they falsely believe to be more religious than them.

Having said that, the article is a little odd. At first is seems like it’s about the issue of religious extremism, but then it ends with Rabbi Boteach’s loudly proclaiming that he is not interested in the job of British Chief Rabbi because he is afraid to be “muzzled” in order to avoid offending “right wing sensibilities.” By the end of the article, I couldn’t really tell if he was lobbying for the job or not. (“I can’t do that job…I’m too good for that. If they were to hire me, they’d have to want someone really good.”)

I also want to quibble, just a bit, with this piece were Rabbi Boteach rejects any defense of Ultra-Orthodox aggression against women:

Other defenders maintained that while the behavior was deplorable secular women were also at fault by insensitively visiting religious neighborhoods immodestly attired and inflaming local sensibilities. Sorry. Judaism’s core value is freedom of choice and men calling themselves religious can choose to transcend even the most incendiary provocation.

I am not I would agree that “Judaism’s core value is freedom of choice.” I think Judaism’s core value is something more like fidelity to God. Sure, the rabbinic reading of the story of Garden of Eden is that we are given free choice to do right or wrong; “choose life” as Deuteronomy puts it. But I don’t think you can really argue that freedom of choice is the core value. We have freedom of choice, that much is obvious, an empirical statement more than a value. But the value is to follow the law, or do God’s will, or live in God’s paths, or however we choose to frame the commitment to follow the laws and ethics of our tradition. Freedom of choice is a condition, the context in which we live out our values. It is not, in and of itself, a religious value.

Now, it’s possible that Rabbi Boteach means to say freedom of choice in the liberal, Western sense, but in fact, Judaism would reject the Western notion of freedom of choice to the exten that choice is value-neutral. Actually, for much of Jewish history, Jewish community could and often did compel people to act according to Jewish law. Only the Enlighment and Emancipation changed the situation. The political right of freedom of choice is cornerstone of the Western political tradition, but it does not really have an analog among traditional Jewish values.

Posted in Jewish Thought | Leave a comment

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