On the Conservative Movement's Gay Rights stand

The other day I was sitting at my desk, the old Olivetti humming in anticipation, both of us just knowing that this was going to be the break-out column, the one that would win the Pulitzer, the one that would get us out of this one-horse-town, to the big time, Peoria, at least. We were going to combine analysis of the Bi-partisan Iraq report with intra-Palestinian bloodletting, Christmas on public property, the slaughter of Muslim by Muslim in Iraq, the possible fall of the Lebanese government, the “Holocaust is a Hoax” conference in Iran, and the price of gasoline. It would've been terrific.

But then, over Ollie's humming, I heard another sound, a grunting sort of noise, accompanied by an indescribable odor. “What's that?” asked I, sotto voce. It typed back that I was covering it's i so it couldn't c (he thinks that's funny). Slowly, ever so slowly, I turned around. What greeted my astonished gaze was an 800 pound gorilla, sitting in my easy chair, chomping on Nachos® wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the words “No Anal Sex.”

Somewhat taken aback, I asked the monster, “Who are you?” He replied in a Dickensian voice, “I am the personification of the Conservative Movement's Law Committee Decision on admitting gay rabbinical and cantorial ordination, of permitting gay commitment ceremonies.” “Oh, that 800 pound gorilla,” I said. “The one that will prevent me from writing about serious issues.” “Yes, boychick, that one.”

Elsewhere in these pages you will find two rabbinical opinions. The one fellow, Epstein, says triumphantly that no longer will halakhah be used to prevent openly gay people from becoming rabbis or cantors—but they aren't to have anal sex, just... What? We can only guess. The other fellow, Roth, says it's not true, it's all unhalakhic. He's wrong. By majority vote. Later that day I got a call from a friend of mine who attends the Orcharder Avenue Schul. He asked, “Why don't you come and join my place? After all, we don't care about halakhah either.” I demurred. Moments later another friend, this one from the Rochambeauer Synagogue rang me up. “Why don't you come to our place? We actually believe in halakhah.” You can understand my confusion. The world is going to hell in a handcart (Nukes in North Korea and will soon be coming to a radical Islamic state near Israel) and the Wise Men of New York are debating amongst other things whether rabbis can have anal sex with other men? “No,” is the answer, but others thought “Yes.” And who's to check on this? Do we trust rabbi Moishe Pipick who is openly gay and living with a partner not to engage in forbidden er, pleasures or do we put a camera in his bedchamber? Gods, what fools these mortals be. I've heard of re-arranging deck chairs on the titanic, but I never thought I'd live to see the day. Read the newspapers, Rabbis. There are actual real crises out there.

So, why do they engage in this debate? Because they want to be fair to a minority that feels itself excluded. But is there no blow back from this? Membership in the Conservative movement is on the wane. Will this increase membership? Probably not. Will it further diminish it? Probably it will. Similar arguments are occurring in the Episcopal church. So is secession; whole congregations are abandoning the American branch of the Anglican church and are affiliating with African and other more traditional Anglicans. (Yes, it's a strange world in which we live.)

What is to be done? Gay people are people. They want the same opportunities as the majority. And who can blame those who strive to give them what they deserve? Not I. But I can quote Hillel in Pirke Avot, “Do not separate yourself from the community.” This decision will please gay people and those straight people who advocate for them. But it will fracture the once proud Conservative Movement as surely as that 800 pound gorilla collapsed my easy chair. It can be argued that if one looks for the right time to make radical change, it will never come. Martin made this case in his Letter From the Birmingham Jail, and gay people associate their cause with the civil rights struggle. They have overcome. Mazal Tov. Let's see if Conservative Judaism survives the take-over. It might. After all, Hillel also taught that we ought not judge our fellows until we have stood in their place.

William A. Donohue, and the “CATHOLIC LEAGUE for Religious and Civil Rights”

The Iraq war is over. Well, no, it’s not that Iraqis have stopped killing Americans and each other; that continues unabated, it’s that there is now near unanimity that the war was a disastrous mistake from the beginning and only getting worse. But there is a new struggle to replace it. It was brought home to me by a series of disassociated articles in last week's New York Times all of which had as their theme the conflict between religion and secular society.

The piece that really set me going was an advertisement appearing on the November 28 op ed page written by William A. Donohue, president of an outfit called the “CATHOLIC LEAGUE for Religious and Civil Rights” whose logo contains a phallic sword, rampant, emblazoned on a shield with the point penetrating the crest. Surely this is a man who each morning must decide whether to wear his brown shirt or if the black is still sufficient. He tells us that the United States is 85% Christian (which, he informs, means we are more Christian than India is Hindu and Israel is Jewish) and that 96 percent of Americans celebrate Christmas. “So,” he asks indignantly, “why do we have to tippy-toe around the religious meaning of Christmas every December?”

Let’s stop here for a minute and study the math. 85% of America is Christian? Really? Does Il Donohue know that large segments of right wing Protestants don’t consider Catholics to be Christian at all? Even if we do concede that Catholics are Christians, a full 11% of Americans who are not Christian celebrate Christmas? They do? Religiously, as opposed to decorating their stores to increase sales? And 97% of Americans say that are not offended by Christmas celebrations? The Gallup people didn’t poll me. Did they you? So, what is it that Donohue and his group want? He’s not entirely clear, but apparently he’s opposed to “the neutering of Christmas” which extends to banishing Nativity scenes from public squares, the expulsion of the baby Jesus from crèches not otherwise forbidden, something about banning red and green at school functions and the censoring of “Silent Night” at municipal concerts, etc.

Oh, the horror of it all.

So as not to be misunderstood, Herr Donohue reminds that “it is important to recognize that the few who are complaining do not belong to any one religious or ethnic group—there is plenty of diversity to be found among the ranks of the disaffected.” He means Jews. I don't remember Hindus or Muslims protesting public displays of religious Christmas, but Jews aplenty have for years let their feelings be known. Dirty Christ killers that we are.

Fairness, Donohue informs, dictates that their intolerance (he means our intolerance, gentle—not gentile—reader) “should not trump the rights of the rest of [ready for this?] us.” Us. Not you. He then goes on to extol, or at least to justify, excluding people—Mother's Day, Father's Day, Veteran's Day, Black History Month, Gay Pride Parades—they all exclude someone. All of those are religious, William? Who knew?

By celebrating Christmas, he states in his peroration, “we” (he means not Jews) are celebrating diversity! We should not let “the cultural fascists get their way this year.” Psychologists call it “projection,” the ascribing to others the sins of ourselves. It's a kind of projectile vomiting of inner conflict. If Mr. Donohue is looking for fascists, his mirror is his best source. His rhetoric is identical to Mussolini's in the 1920s and '30s. The will of the people as expressed in me, Il Duce, must not tolerate any dissent!

What do we know of Mr. Donohue? A quick Google search turns up some fascinating data. Here's an interesting item, one among many: “Hollywood is controlled by secular Jews who hate Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular.” Well, I can't speak for Hollywood, but I am a secular Jew and I hate neither Christianity nor Catholicism in particular, though I don't have a particular fondness for Mr Donohue or his ilk. I can't speak for Jesus, either, but as he was a co-religionist, perhaps I can guess what he would think of those who would impose religious values on all. The Catholics I know were appalled when the Supremes ruled that a nativity scene, when surrounded by secular objects like Santas and reindeer is just as secular. They are not; they are objects of devotion which should adorn front yards, and churches. Happy Holidays, Bill!

On Milton Friedman and Karl Marx

Caveat lector: Whole books have been written on what I do not understand about economic theory. Nevertheless I understand that economics is rightly called “the dismal science.” Last week Milton Friedman died. He and Karl Marx would seem as far from each other as polar opposites can be, but to these eyes, not distorted by hours of actual reading, there is a remarkable similarity between the two giants. (There is the well known story that on his death bed Karl lamented, Je ne suis pas un Marxiste, a claim Milton could also have made.)

Friedman predicted what another economist would later call stagflation—the concurrent rise of prices and decrease in employment. The way out of this dilemma is by fostering a market economy. The market will clear things up if government doesn't interfere (except to control the money supply). But that's not all. Government should not interfere in any way in the economy. Doctors should not be licensed, the market will weed out the good from the bad practitioners. It is an invisible hand, controlling everything.

Marx also believed in the invisible hand. It wasn't the market though, it was class struggle. Soon the gap between exploiter and exploited would be so narrow that the overthrow of capitalism was inevitable. Government would eventually wither away once the workers had survived the inevitable assault on their revolution by capitalist forces.

So, the arch-capitalist and the scientific socialist, are both economic determinists. Marx being discredited, let's explore Milton. Of course the market will weed out the good doctors from the quacks, but without a regulatory agency there'll to be a lot of quacks doing a great deal of harm until word of mouth exposes them. Have you tried to book an airline ticket since deregulation? There were about a dozen national carriers and the meals were free and travel agents could book you. Now? Choices are limited, food costs, and fares are way up. When energy was a monopoly controlled by government, Enron didn't brown-out California. It couldn't; there were regulations that prevented it. I'm not old enough to get confused about which Medicare plan I'll choose, and my hope is that by the time I need it the market will have driven out the crooks, but in the meanwhile, how many seniors are confused? Friedman advocated abolishing the draft—a smaller army means less money to sustain it and longer enlistments mean better soldiers. Let's compare. With the draft we lost Vietnam; without it, we are losing Iraq. If the idea of having an army is winning, what has been accomplished other than creation of what we used sneeringly to call a mercenary army? The poor, the unskilled, still predominate. We talk a good game about supporting the troops, but the non-economic reality is that while those mercenaries are fighting and dying, we're not paying attention, we're watching football and tsk-tsking whenever we see on TV that four more Americans were killed. And why should we be paying more attention? They're mercenaries after all; it's what they do. If they were our children I think we'd be more involved.

Milton said that “The free market is the only mechanism that has ever been discovered for achieving participatory democracy.” These are strange words coming from a man who provided economic advice to the Pinochet regime in Chile. He had Stalinist Russia in mind, but blaming Marx for Stalin is like blaming Jesus for Jerry Falwell. Give the guys a break. Marx was living in a period of ruthless exploitation of the proletariat and he saw the world through that prism. Allowing the market place to dominate wages would result only in continued degradation of the human workers without whom there is no product to sell on the open market.

What Marx and Milton ultimately share is that they are both wrong. There is no economic law valid for all times and all places. The world works beyond economic statistics. Those soldiers I callously called mercenaries might define themselves as patriots. Marx said that family was, essentially, only a mutually beneficial economic unit. I beg to differ. Love, companionship, humor, sharing of emotional burdens is more than an economic relationship.

I'm sorry Milton is dead. He was a brilliant man who missed the point. I'm sorry Marx was forced to say that he wasn't a Marxist, so far from his ideals had his successors traveled. Long live humanity as, dismally, we work through the fog of economic theorists.

Morgan's escape

On another page you will note pictures of dogs and other lesser pets. There you will see Morgan the Wonder Dog, canine of my heart, bane of my existence. That she is smarter than most people I know, including myself, is obvious. That she knows and exploits this is, unfortunately, equally true.
For example... Last winter we had a heavy snowfall, eight inches of the white stuff, which a few days later was reduced on sidewalks to occasional patches of ice. To make a bad situation worse, my wife packed her bags and left me. No, she hadn’t finally come to her senses; she had a conference up in Cambridge. This meant I, I of all people, had to take the dog on her early morning walk, a joy I generally am more than willing to avoid.
So, we are walking, Morgan and I, and she pooped and I scooped and then I hit the inevitable patch of unseen ice. Flop-plop I flipped somehow managing to hold onto the bag of poop but releasing the leash. Morgan immediately realized she was free, but stayed around long enough to make sure I wasn’t dead (after all, no Josh equaled no breakfast). I wasn’t too sure myself. I’d managed to fall on my left hip, or what passes for my left hip since all that’s there now is steel and cement connecting femur to pelvis. I was sure I’d smashed it and wondered if the lack of excruciating pain meant that I was dead. Morgan, about 10 paces away, looked on with an expression of some concern (breakfast, now being in doubt). “Morgan, come!” I commanded menacingly. In vain.
“Ha! He lives,” the light in her eyes announced, and she frolicked away, leash dragging behind her. But then, to mock me she came back, circled me once (I was still aground, trying vainly to get up). I lunged for the leash, and missed. “Morgan, come here!” I said in my most authoritative voice. (Just how commanding I could be under the circumstances—prone, feet slipping on the ice as I tried to rise up, a bag of dog poop in my hands, you can only imagine.) Finally, as from the lagoon out of our most ancient amphibious ancestors arose I unsteadily achieved verticality. But Morgan had fled.
My limbs were sore, my chest was sore, my hip was sore, and my dog had run away. In all the world, all I had left was a bag of poop. But then, salvation. Morgan, who loves to ride in cars, saw that some people were opening their car door. She jumped in and commanded, “Drive, quickly, let the wind rustle through my ears as the air is sucked into my nostrils; drive, drive, drive.” The mother screamed in terror, the children, who had helped me gather in Morgan on previous escapes, screamed in delight, and grabbed the leash. I hobbled over to them, collected my disloyal dog and limped slowly home.
“Breakfast, Josh?” She asked, hopefully. “What happened to loyalty?” I asked. What happened to “if you’re hurt, I’m there for you”? “Instead of kibbles, how about some of that canned food?” she replied. “Why did you leave me when I called you?” “Because of the story I read last week.” “You’re hitting our books again?” “Only when you sleep.” “Which story?” “‘The Last Match.’” “That’s what you model your behavior on? The man is dying of hunger and cold, he calls his dog, and the dog abandons him?” “The dog left the man because the man was going to kill the dog and eat it.” “Oh, yeah, but I wouldn’t do that.” “You never know, you just never know. Open the door; let’s eat.” Well, I fed her, of course, but I also punished her. When I went out onto the deck to fill the bird feeders, I didn’t let her come out with me—she loves to chase squirrels out there and to see the birds flap away—so she sulked. It by now being late I grabbed my lunch bag and hopped into the car. As I drove off to school I looked out the window and saw that she was looking out at me with a smile on her face. I didn’t know quite why until I got to my office and noticed the poop bag still in my coat pocket. My lunch bag was safely at home. For those of you keeping score, it’s Dog 106, Human 0.

On Indian Schools and the Jews of Russia

In the 1870’s some bureaucrat did the math and discovered that it would be cheaper to turn Indians into regular Americans than to kill them. The result was Indian Boarding Schools, the first in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, later a dozen others across the country.

Even assuming a nobility of intention, the process of recruitment was appalling. Troops entered villages, rounded up terrified children, put them onto sealed trains and took them far from their weeping parents. Upon arrival at the school their hair was cut and their Indian clothes burnt, replaced by “American” clothing. This merely increased the separation trauma. At some point early in the process there was an arbitrary selection. Children were assigned a number, 1,2,3,4. All the ones became Methodist, the twos Baptist, the threes Presbyterian, I don’t remember what became of the fours, but my guess is, “not Jewish.”

The school day began at 5:00 with the donning of military attire, military marching, military inspections etc. In class the children were taught math, spelling, history, all of which is useful, and, yes, patriotism as well. In the afternoon the boys learned a manual skill, the girls received domestic and office training. Participation in sports was encouraged, songs were sung. “English only” was the rule, strictly enforced. Upon graduation the Indians had a trade, thought in English and were considered civilized. If they chose to they could return to the reservation, but there was nothing there for them anymore, other than their parents, who now lived in a foreign world, thought uncivilized by their own children. Success, in the eyes of the bureaucrat.

The obvious comparison is to Nazi treatment of Jews, at least in terms of “recruitment” and “selection.” One obvious difference, though, is that whereas American kidnappers thought they were doing the Indians a good (if unappreciated) turn, the Germans were out to annihilate not only a culture, but the physical existence of a people. Similar tactics were attempted in czarist Russia. Nicholas I (1825-1855) decreed that all Jews must wear Russian clothing and trim their beards in the Russian manner. Crueler, he initiated a policy whereby Jewish youths as young as age 12 were kidnapped and placed in army camps (cantons) where over the next six years peasant sergeants would try to force them to give up their religion. Later he recruited an American rabbi to set up a system of Jewish schools where children would be taught the Russian language, history, etc. When the young rabbi realized that the schools were to be a front for proselytizing Jews, he fled the country and the scheme came to naught.

But for all the trauma, for all the negative comparisons, we must still ask—was what Americans did to the Indians worse than life in an English public (boarding) school, designed for the upper classes? Same military grooming, same physical and mental abuse, same tearful early separation from parents and a life loved. The difference, of course, is that the English voluntarily sent their children knowing that for all the cruelty they would encounter, their sons would emerge as leaders of society. Individual Indians, stripped of their culture, were given a trade. A fair exchange? Maybe. Maybe not.

So, the historian in me knows that questions remain—Were the methods used as bad as the results were good? Were the Indians better off living in poverty and disease on the reservation or forcibly removed from their parents’ love and brought hundreds of miles from home to learn to be American. (I suppose that from their perspective it’s an unfair either/or. The best thing that could have happened was if Europeans had never come to America.) The pragmatist in me, the assimilated Jew that I am, says the Indians benefited despite the trauma of the experience. Having a trade (and later, after the era of compulsory “recruitment” taking college preparatory courses) is better than being an unskilled worker. The humanist in me (also the product of being an assimilated Jew) says that if the Indians were doing no harm (their principal crime was being in the way) they ought to have been left alone to live their culture as they had, undisturbed, for centuries. If I knew the correct response to this quandary, I’d give it to you, but I am sunk in my ignorance as to what are the divine intentions. No doubt many of my readers are not, and will inform me of the truth, which will set me free.

On Rabbis against living wage

Returning from schul on the first day of Rosh Hashanah I was happy to see that my copy of the Forward had arrived in the mail. After lunch, my stomach full, my spirits high, I perused the front page and saw a story about “Top rabbis of Conservative Judaism” who promoted a plan to encourage women to go to the mikveh. “Very nice,” I said to myself, totally useless, but very nice. Women who already go to the mikveh will continue to do so and those who don’t, still won’t. But then, just below this courageously ground breaking legislation I read that “In a separate vote, the committee failed to pass an opinion requiring Jewish business owners to pay hourly workers a living wage and, when possible, to hire union workers.” I glanced at the date of the paper. Maybe this was an early or a late April Fools’ Day joke or an early or late Purim edition. But no, it was the September 22 edition. I read further.

Of the 25 members of the Jewish Law and Standards committee, only three rabbis voted that workers employed by Jews should get a living wage; 10 abstained; seven voted against and five were absent. The principal opponent of the resolution seemed to have been one Paul Plotkin, described (I hope erroneously) as religious leader of Margate, Florida’s Temple Beth Am. The proposal would have made a nice sermon, he patronizingly said, but it’s not suitable for an halachic argument. The Forward explains that with increased affluence, today’s Jews are less sympathetic to the plight of workers. This may be so, but it’s a circumstance to be cured, not pandered to.

These rabbis who voted “no” or were brave enough to abstain, have they never read the haftarah from Yom Kippur, the one that contains these words: “Is this the fast that I have chosen? … This is My chosen fast: to loosen all the bonds that bind men unfairly, to let the oppressed go free, to break every yoke. Share your bread with the hungry; take the homeless into your home. Clothe the naked when you see him, do not turn away from people in need.” Have they never sat at a Seder and discussed the ruthless exploitation of the workers known as Hebrew slaves in the days of pharaoh? Have they not intoned the words “We were slaves in Egypt, not just our remote ancestors?” Don’t they say, “All who are hungry let them come and eat”? Or maybe these Conservative rabbis, fat and happy, representing their affluent congregants, protecting their paychecks, playing golf in Margate while withholding straw from those who need it most read from a different Haggadah, the one that says, “Hey, we’ve got ours, let’s bring in some more Mexicans to whom we can pay bupkiss.” That Hagadah.

Had they no parents or grandparents who lived in slums on the Lower East Side (now the trendy Lower East Side, I’m told)? Wasn’t it the unions that brought the workers the American dream of home ownership, of the opportunity of a college education for their children? Didn’t greater prosperity come when more workers had more money to spend on more goods and services? Don’t these rabbis who claim to be religious leaders know that they are in an exactly congruent position with the founding fathers of the United States? And I don’t mean that as a compliment either. Those wise men decided that it would be better for the country if they allowed the continuation of slavery. No slavery, bad economy. Our (well, not my) rabbis who argue that the “pro-labor paper would create an undue hardship on Jewish business owners” are arguing exactly as the anti-abolitionists argued in the 18th and 19th century.

As the chief proponent of the paper on “Work, Workers and the Jewish Owner” Rabbi Jill Jacobs put it, “We ask people to do all sorts of things that put them at an economic disadvantage. That’s because we believe in Jewish law and we don’t believe that making money is the highest Jewish law.” Brava, rabbi Jacobs, Brava. You stand for Judaism as an ethical norm, not an upwardly mobile social class looking down at those below.

And you? Where is your heart this penitential season? With the exploitation of labor, or with Isaiah? To me, the choice is obvious. If capitalism is going to succeed, wages must be equitable. Workers are what give the things value. Ask Adam Smith. Ask HaShem. They’ll tell you.

September 29- On scurrilous letter re: France as anti-Semitic

Have you been receiving the same internet nonsense I have? It purports to inform of the horrors afflicting the Jews in France. In Lyon a car was rammed into a synagogue and set on fire; the Jewish religious center in Montpellier was firebombed; on the statue of Alfred Dreyfus in Paris the words “Dirty Jew” were painted. Other atrocities are listed. All of this happened in the past week, we are told. No wonder French Jews are fleeing to the relative safety of Israel. We are urged to boycott French products and its shores. We can exert amazing pressure, the broadside reads, “and whatever else we may know about the French, we most certainly know that they are like a cobweb in a hurricane in the face of well directed pressure.” We are urged to send this message along to our family, our friends and co-workers.

OK, friends and family and co-workers, you can stop sending me this; I’ve seen it.

Is any of it true? Well, yes, the specific events did happen. But they happened not this week, but in April 2002 at the height of the Intifada. The culprits were not French Frenchmen; they were Muslim immigrants, or the children of immigrants, mostly poor, religious and susceptible to violence. Some few of them saw what their co-religionists were doing in Israel, they felt solidarity with them, and they acted. Once the attacks began the French police protected Jewish institutions throughout the country and prosecuted captured felons and the attacks ceased.

Did French Jews panic? No. They took reasonable precautions, as did the Jews of Rhode Island after the recent shooting at the Seattle Jewish Federation, and continued to live their lives. There was no mass Jewish emigration from France to Israel.

When Muslims rioted in France in the fall of 2005, again the Jewish community did not panic. “Manek Weintraub, of the Representative Council of the Jewish Institutions of France (CRIF) told the British website TotallyJewish.com, ‘So far nothing has happened. There was a Molotov cocktail that seems to have been hurled at a small synagogue but nobody really knows about it. It [the riots] will concern the public authorities but Jews are largely absent from the story, which is welcome.’”

This does not sound like panic to me.

So who wrote the “Jews are being led to the slaughter in France!” piece that has crossed your desk and mine? Answer: Not my cousin, not my friend, my not my co-worker, they just took the bait, believed the hype and passed it on. Who does that leave? Someone with an agenda, perhaps? One source could be Arutz Sheva (Channel Seven), a right wing Israeli online media network banned by the Israeli government because of racist incitement. In fact, a quick Google search confirms that it was broadcasting this material in 2005. But where did it get it? As early as April 2002 there was a similar piece going around the internet, purportedly from Senator Joseph Lieberman. It contained the same information. But Lieberman didn’t write the letter; it was a forgery. So who’s responsible for that? Perhaps someone who is angry at France for not supporting America’s attack on Iraq, someone angry enough to object to the fact that France was right (as the government in Washington now fully admits) that there never were any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, that Saddam Hussein never cooperated with Al Qaeda, that he and Osama hated each other. The French knew all this and spoke up. They must be punished.

Is France, after all, the only country recently to experience anti-semitic acts? “Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership, Inc.” (no, I’m not making this up) issued a broadside on December 8, 2003 listing thirteen recent acts of anti-Semitism in Europe (two in Belgium, four in Britain, two in Italy, one each in Germany, Ukraine, Greece, Holland, Slovakia.) And then it comes to the point: “But nowhere have the flames of anti-Semitism burned more furiously than in France” and then it gives the usual old examples. What does “Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership” advocate? My initial guess (considering the source) was “Pack a Rod, Plug a Frog” but no, boycott etc. just as the original letter with the identical words urges.

Am I the only one smelling a rat here? Aren’t there anti-Semites in all countries, including or own? (Seattle, anyone? The LA nursery school shooter?) Bad things happen in even the most wonderful places. Vive La France.

September 15- Lessons about proportionate response to kidnapping from the Iliad

The return of the Jewish New Year is happening with increasing frequency, or so it seems. Already I can taste the flavors of my wife’s cooking and hear the Rosh Hashanah-only tunes. We have survived 5766. As a child I used to think of God sitting with an open book on His lap deciding who should live and inscribing the names of the fortunate. Now, as an adult, I see no evidence that He isn’t, so like the famous wager of Pascal, I’ll bet on the side of belief and see if it pays off.

Jews are Janus-faced this time of year. We look backward to see forward. I always look backward; I’m an historian. It’s an occupational hazard. Last week I was teaching about the ancient Greeks. I told them the story of the contest between Aphrodite, Hera, and Athena. Each wanted the golden apple inscribed “To the Fairest.” Zeus refused to choose—he was as dull witted as he was strong and randy, but he wasn’t insane enough to get involved in this no-win (for him) situation. Instead they sought out a man, and asked him. Naturally a mere mortal couldn’t choose the most beautiful among the three goddesses, so each tendered a bribe. Hera, offered power; Athena, wisdom; Aphrodite, the most beautiful of women. Paris, a prince of Troy tending sheep (his father had received a prophesy when he was born that he would be responsible for the destruction of Troy; rather than kill the infant he gave him to a shepherd to do it; these things never work out, of course) chose Aphrodite who delivered on her promise. But she had failed to tell the young, foolish, man, that the woman promised would be Helen (she of the face that was soon to launch a thousand ships) already married to Menelaus, the warlike king of Sparta, scion of the cursed race of Atreus. They met while he was on grand tour following his punishment. When Menelaus was away, they stole off, landing safely in Troy, but bringing in their wake those self-same thousand ships filled with Greeks, determined to get her back.

There were those in Troy who told Paris to return the girl, that she wasn’t worth the price, but Paris being vainglorious, and knowing that no one could force him to return Helen, insisted on keeping his prize. The Greeks eventually came and destroyed the city.

As I was telling the students this familiar story, it occurred to me, mid-sentence: Can there be a more analogous situation in literature to what happened in the Middle East this summer? Hezbollah stole into our territory, stole our two soldiers (thinking, it is now revealed, that there would be no consequences). Many prominent Lebanese asked, begged, for the soldiers to be released, but Hezbollah refused, in its arrogance, and Lebanon was bombarded, its infrastructure devastated.

In the ancient story as told by Homer, the end of the war was not ambiguous. The Greeks, love ’em or hate ’em, knew what they were after and settled for no less than the return of their hostage (yes, Helen was a willing hostage, but even she yearned to return to Sparta).

When I teach the Iliad I usually root for the Trojans, especially for their great hero Hector. The Greeks, it’s always seemed to me, were the arrogant Yankees, the Trojans the noble Brooklyn Dodgers, doomed to fail gallantly. But now, now the Greeks are still the Yankees, the Trojans still the Dodgers, but current events allow me to view the past with a different perspective. When they steal your people, you have to go in and get them back. Innocent Trojans died; innocent Lebanese died. They should have taken control of their destinies by forcing Hezbollah to give up the captured soldiers, by forcing Paris to give back Helen. If Israel’s response was disproportionate, it was just acting as people always do, when they can, when their people are snatched up.

At year’s end, year’s beginning, let me end where I started, with a New Year’s reflection. Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to speak to you, to pique your curiosity, occasionally to entertain, not infrequently to annoy (apparently). One day I’m going to trade in this old Olivetti portable electric typewriter, but not yet. Shanna Tova; may 5767 be for us a year of love and joy, peace and prosperity, good health and the wonder of discovery. Be strong and resolute, Haverim.

Response to David Klinghoffer on the religious right

Every once in a while I hear the ground rumble. Usually it’s my mother turning over in her grave as I commit one faux pas or another. It’s nice to know that she’s keeping an eye on me. But when it happened a couple of weeks ago, I checked and no, it wasn’t her this time, it was old Abraham Cahan.

Cahan (1860-1951) established the Jewish Forward in 1897. His paper espoused socialist principles. The rights of the workingman, the release from the superstitions of the religious, were his rallying cries. The newspaper was also a way to Americanize his readers. Yes, it was written in Yiddish, but the goal was to turn the children and grandchildren of immigrants into the American doctors, lawyers, dentists, teachers, union activists that they became. “It is as important to teach the reader to carry a handkerchief in his pocket as it is to teach him to carry a union card,” he famously wrote.

So what made him turn over in his grave? Probably the piece by David Klinghoffer who began his August 18th column in the “Forward” with “Some members of America’s political and cultural elite…” This is code wording for liberals, we élitists not in touch with the common man; it’s a word “compassionate conservatives” (as opposed to the usual kind, I suppose) use to slur liberals who, as far as I can tell, are the people who speak for the underclasses in America—the poor, the worker, the black, the immigrant.

OK, so what are we élitists doing today, according to Klinghoffer? We are confusing the political philosophy of Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and America’s religious conservatives. Who knew? And we are wrong to think of Bush, Jr. etc. as attempting to impose an Iranian style theocracy on America. As a former colleague of his at the “National Review” argues, disingenuously, “even the most ambitious members of the so-called Christian right wish to do nothing more radical than return the United States to the status quo of the 1950s” and that was certainly not a theocracy.

Ah, the 1950s, I remember them well. Bible-thumping ministers denouncing integration, voting for the likes of Orville Faubus, Ross Barnett, and George “segregation now, segregation tomorrow and segregation forever” Wallace. It was a quieter, gentler time when Mrs. Hollman, my fourth grade teacher, would start our day at PS193 by reading form the from Psalms, but other teachers across the country began their classes with the Lord’s Prayer. The words “Under God” were added to the Pledge of Allegiance, though the pledge’s author, Francis Bellamy, a Baptist minister, had deliberately omitted them. But even in the 1950s I don’t remember anyone teaching creationism in school or even the deceptively re-coined version of it “intelligent design.” That throwback to the 1920s had to wait until our own enlightened time, foisted upon us by the Christian right, if they can get away with it. I don’t remember in the 1950s arguments that religious symbols such as the Ten Commandments, should be emblazoned on public property, but I do remember that come Christmas we Jewish students of PS 193 learned to sing “Silent Night, Holy Night” as well as “Jingle Bells.” I loved being excluded from the rest of America, didn’t you?

Klinghoffer argues that we élitists miss the point that some of biblical law is essentially natural law—thou shall not murder, thou shall not steal, etc. Fine, so we don’t need religion to teach it. The Ten Commandments begins, “I am the Lord Your God…” how in conformity with the first amendment’s separation of church and state is that, festooned behind the judge? And what kind of God does it mean? The unitary God of Jews and Muslims? The Trinity of Christianity? The Divine Spirit of Reason preached by natural law philosophers such as Cicero? These are the kind of questions people kill each other over, each certain that he has the correct answer and that the others are infidels (or, to cite Klinghoffer in another context, “pagans.” A blurb for a forthcoming book reads: “Addressing such timely topics as the controversy over public displays of the Commandments and the battles over Intelligent Design, Klinghoffer demonstrates that Christians and Jews are united in their opposition to the pagan aspects of our culture.”) Oh, Zeus, why do you not strike such people with your thunderbolt? That’s the trouble with Zeus. He’s never around when we need him.

No wonder poor Abe Cahan is rolling over in his grave.

Sitting around Shabbat Table

Our dining room table is an elongated circle, an oval of wood; mahogany, I think, maybe redwood. A legacy of my maternal grandparents, it’s old by contemporary American standards. I date it to the mid-nineteen twenties, though I may be off by a decade. When the children are home or when we have guests, my wife and I sit at opposite ends, but when it’s just the two of us we sit closer together, across the short axis. On Shabbat the candlesticks frame our view of each other between the glow of the shimmering lights. In the winter, when evening comes early, these provide the only source of illumination in the room that we allow to penetrate the darkness. We sing Shalom Aleichem, staring into each other’s eyes. It’s a song based on the Talmudic suggestion that two angels accompany the inauguration of Shabbat, a good angel and a bad. If the home is well prepared the good angel blesses the household and the bad angel is forced to say “Amen.” If the house is not well ordered, the bad angel curses and the good angel is forced to say “Amen.” But the hymn, at least in the form we have it, does not distinguish between good and bad angels, it speaks only of angels, and in my mind all of them are good. What else would HaShem create?

“We wish you peace, attending angels, angels of the most sublime, the King of kings, the Holy One, praised be He.

“Come to us in peace, angels of peace, angels of the most sublime, the King of kings, the Holy One, praised be He.

“Bless us with peace, angels of peace, angels of the most sublime, the King of kings, the Holy one, praised be He.”

And then reluctantly, ruefully:

“Take your leave in peace, angels of peace, angels of the most sublime, the King of kings, the Holy One, praised be He.”

When we finish singing I bless the boys if they are home and then kiss my bride of the past 35 years and thank her for being herself and for making us ourselves, for making our home the center of our lives. Then I chant two history lessons interrupted by a blessing. I sing in my off-tuned warble of the creation of Shabbat on the 7th day; I give thanks for the fruit of the vine and then I remind us of the exodus from Egypt. These two births, of Shabbat, marking the completion of creation and of the Jewish people, chosen, saved, for reasons we do not understand, inaugurate Shabbat in our house each Friday evening as we end one week and begin anew another.

So, when I, the rationalist, the student of Voltaire and Diderot sit at my oval Shabbat table, the gift of my grandparents, and someday our gift to one of our children, when we sing the hypnotically repetitious words of Shalom Aleichem, do I really think there are angels in the room, bringing peace? As I look into my wife’s eyes, reflecting back at me the flickering light of the candles she has just lit, as I see my children in their chairs, whether they are actually in the room or not, when I know that the week’s troubles are over, at least for a few hours in this sacred temple of which we have made our dining room, then yes, I do believe in the angels and I am glad they are there and just a bit sad when I sing the final verse:

“Take your leave in peace, angels of peace, angels of the most sublime, the King of Kings, the Holy One, praised be He.

As I write these words I am just back from our annual pilgrimage to the Tanglewood music festival. On Friday night we were not at our oval table, we were on the great lawn, waiting for the music to commence (Bach, Bach and Handel). To my right there was a family, a father, mother and daughter. The mother quietly, unobtrusively, blessed and lit the Shabbat candles and then together, soto voce, they sang Shalom Aleichem. The father blessed his little girl, aged around ten, and then said kiddush over the wine. After they passed around the cup, the mother said the blessing over the challah and together they ate their meal, as the glorious music engulfed us all. Should Shabbat be inaugurated any other way?

What I learned of human nature by watching Romeo and Juliet

Last Saturday I woke to the news of the shooting at the Seattle JCC. The war in Lebanon dragged on. I felt the need to get over the gloom, so we drove to Wilcox Park in Westerly to see Shakespeare. He’s been dead for quite a while now, but the magic of his words lives on quite nicely, thank you very much. The play was Romeo and Juliet, the first half of which, you will recall, is comedic, the second part less so.

Things start to go bad when Tybalt, Juliet’s cousin, kills Mercutio, Romeo’s quick-witted friend, and in a rage, Romeo kills Tybalt. All this on the day Romeo of the house of Montague secretly married Juliet, daughter of Capulet. Juliet’s mother, unaware of her daughter’s marriage, curses Romeo; she wants him dead. Attempting to impeach the credibility of the one reliable witness, she wails:

“He is kinsman to the Montague,
Affection makes him false, he speaks not true…
I beg for justice, which thou, Prince, must give—
Romeo slew Tybalt, Romeo must not live.”

Instead, Romeo is exiled. Friar Lawrence, in an attempt to bring the warring houses together has arranged for the secret marriage, and now he comes up with a plan to re-unite the lovers. Juliet will take a potion to feign death. Friar Lawrence will send a note to Romeo informing him of the ruse and inviting him back to Verona to sweep her away to the safety of his exile in Mantua. But the plan fails. Romeo doesn’t get the note. He buys poison, goes to the Capulet tomb where he drinks the quick acting stuff. Almost immediately upon his death, Juliet awakens, sees her dead lover, tries to find a few more drops of the poison to swallow, but when that fails, takes Romeo’s dagger and stabs herself to death.

The prince of Verona, who has been trying to impose peace between the warring factions within his city finds the bodies and summons the fathers. Montague enters the crypt tearfully announcing that his wife has died of a broken heart as a result of Romeo’s banishment. The prince, upon discovering the truth of what has happened, bellows in rage:

“Where be these enemies? Capulet! Montague!
See what a scourge is laid upon your hate
That Heav’n finds means to kill your joys ...
And I for winking at our discords too
Have lost a brace of kinsmen. All are punish’d.”

Later he modifies the hasty decree as the play ends. The families reconcile, but it is too late. The children still lie embraced by the eternal sleep of death. The prince sums up:

“A glooming peace this morning with it brings,
The Sun for sorrow will not show his head.
Go hence to have more talk of these sad things:
Some shall be pardon’d and some punished.
For never was a story of more woe
Than this of Juliet and her Romeo.”

Listening to Juliet’s mother and later to the prince, looking to the sky and seeing the dagger-like image of the constellation Cygnus, the nature of man was suddenly revealed to me in all its horrid simplicity. In Lebanon it is being played out dramatically these past few weeks, though it’s been simmering to the occasional boil ever since at least 1936. Are we Jews the house Montague? Are the Arabs Capulet? I do not know. I do not care, but either way we are:

“Two households both alike in dignity
…From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,
Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.”

Shakespeare reminds us of two contradictory truths. The enmity between the houses was as self-destructively stupid as it was inevitable in the nature of man. The calls for vengeance bring on more vengeance. It is the human condition. We know it’s wrong, we know it’s stupid, and yet we cannot escape from the gripping maw of hatred which engulfs. As a student of history I try to pretend that we humans are reasonable creatures, and yet what crimes, wars, murders do I relate to my students on almost a daily basis? That being the case, though I know it will ultimately do no good, I’m for Israel being triumphant over Hezbollah and Hamas fighters until the world (the prince—for a while in 2000, I thought that the prince would be president Clinton; I’m pretty sure it won’t be Kofi Annan) imposes a peace that will last, how long? Only for a while, until the next unforgivable outrage.

Response to Hamas kidnapping IDF soldier

I write on Friday the 14^th of July. Four thousand miles to the east rockets are exploding, bombs are dropping; the emotional reverberations are felt in my home; yours too, I imagine. What the situation will be when the paper arrives at your door, I do not know, but today, it is bad. Worse, Israel has only itself to blame. It did not learn the lessons of history.

Out of Gaza on June 25 came Hamas gunmen to kill Israeli soldiers on Israeli soil, and then they kidnapped one of them, a young corporal with dual Israeli-French citizenship. For weeks Jews in southern Israel had been hit with rockets, more annoying than lethal, but always an unprovoked menace.

Then on July12 Hezbollah forces crossed into northern Israel and killed and kidnapped other soldiers. Israel responded with an incursion into Lebanon, hitting bridges and the airport in an effort to prevent the kidnappers from taking their prey out of Lebanon into Iran. Already Nahariya and Haifa have been hit by Hezbollah rockets. Each side’s fury mounts with each rocket landing, each soldier or civilian killed or wounded.

What is to be learned? Nothing is learned. That’s the problem. The British and the French gave the Sudatenland to Hitler to buy peace; the French then hid behind the Maginot line while the British felt secure on their side of the Channel. None to any avail. That’s the lesson that ought to have been learned by Israel, but wasn’t. The most fundamental lesson is that Israel must never again unilaterally withdraw from territory. It does not work. Israel pulled out of Sinai when Anwar Sadat and Menachim Begin reached agreement on how and when and for what in exchange. In short, the Sinai for peace—real peace, not just the hope of peace. For this the Arab leader won the Noble Peace Prize and later an Arab bullet. But the peace held. (Israel offered Gaza in the same package, but Sadat was too smart to accept it. Gaza had only been occupied by Egyptian forces, it had never been part of Egypt proper; “No, Menachem, you can keep that snake pit,” the Egyptian leader conceded. One can only wonder what Begin’s reaction was. Probably not joy.)

But that’s it, the one example of negotiated handover of land. Later, in 2000, Israel surprised the world by unilaterally withdrawing, overnight, from southern Lebanon, callously abandoning its Christian allies to their fate. Munich redux. Almost immediately Hezbollah moved in and started attacking northern Israel with rockets and mortars claiming that a small area (Shebaa Farms, a 28 sq. km. piece of land) was still occupied territory, despite this time the usually hostile world siding with Israel, saying “no, it’s not.” And then last year, after a year’s buildup, Israel removed its settlers and soldiers from Gaza. Immediately weapons were smuggled from Egypt into Gaza. The Hamas led government either turned a blind eye or actively engaged in the process of illegally arming its militants. Either way, the results were inevitable and soldiers and civilians on both sides died.

So the first uncomfortable conclusion is that Israel must not again retreat without ironclad guarantees that it will not be assaulted by the very people to whom it returned land taken in defensive wars. The tail of the tiger is an uncomfortable thing to hold. Letting go is more than uncomfortable; it’s disastrous.

And the other choice? Can there ever be peace with the Palestinians? Egypt was one thing; Israel occupied another country’s territory and then gave it back following negotiations. But the Palestinian leadership believes that Israel itself is occupied Palestine. So what to do? Expel the Arabs from Gaza and the West Bank? Re-occupy southern Lebanon? One choice is worse than the next. Even if Israel succeeds in its intention of destroying the Hezbollah leadership, the Arabs can wait. If not now, then later their attack will be successful, they think. By this scenario, the only way to avoid the killings is to pull down the flag, blow up the improvements made over the past 60 years and go back to Europe and other places from which the Jews came with their talents. That’s not going to happen either. The Jewish people are in this thing for the long term. Withdrawal is not an option.

What the situation will be when the paper arrives at your door, I do not know, but today, it is bad.

Comparison of religion to baseball

Which is more important, religion…or baseball? Or is baseball the ultimate religion? It’s a tough call. I grew up as a Jew (but not as a Red Sox fan) in the leafy East Midwood section of Brooklyn. Until the first time my father took me to Ebbets Field I’d only seen the Dodgers on the grainy TV in our living room. In black and white. I gasped for breath in astonishment when I saw the real thing. The vastness of the perfectly mown green outfield grass, the brown of the base paths, the sparkling white uniforms of the Dodgers, all a foretaste of heaven, I thought.

When the god-like players poured out of their dugout and ran to their positions, Hodges to First, Gilliam at Second, Pee-Wee at Short and Robinson at Third, the deep uncompromising ebony of Jackie’s skin made me feel proud to be a Brooklynite because, even then, I knew that we’d been the first to allow black people to play. We did that wonderful thing and changed the world. In the back of my mind I assumed that all the players were Jewish. I still do.

That the greedy unspeakable son of Satan, Walter O’Malley, would bring the team to Los Angeles was one thing (what could you expect from such a bottom line bottom feeder) but that my heroes would actually go was jaw dropping, bone shaking, stomach wrenching. We were betrayed; the joy of our lives was stolen. One hero remained pure though. Jackie. When he was traded to the hated NY Giants at the end of the ’57 season, he refused to go; instead he retired from baseball, pure as pure could be.

In later life I became a Red Sox rooter by choice, but in fact it wasn’t much of a switch at all. Ebbets Field and Fenway Park are very similar; the Yankees are still the archenemy. Like the Dodgers, the Sox have only reached the Promised Land of World Series victory once in my lifetime, in both cases having to defeat the Yankees to do it; like the Dodgers the Sox have heroes of the past, godlike figures who walked the earth (Smokey Joe Wood, Ted Williams, Carl Yastrzemski); we both have our traitors (Harry Frazee, Walter O’Malley) but only Boston had an official curse (of the Bambino). The Red Sox religion has uniforms (hats and jerseys); we have our priests (managers and coaches); we have our songs (Neil Diamond’s “Sweet Caroline” and the risqué “Dirty Waters” whenever we win at home); we have our epic stories, of Buckner’s bumble in ’86, of Fiske’s home run in ’75, of leaving Pedro in for just too long in 2003; we have our sacred space, Fenway Park, hallowed be its halls.

My other religion is a form of Judaism possibly unique to me. I attend synagogue, but don’t generally pray. I wear the uniform (tallit, tephellin and kippah); I sing songs in half understood Hebrew. I maintain a kosher diet, more or less, mostly more; I behave in what I hope is an ethical manner. I believe that God created the world and man, except when I believe that chemical forces interacted and KABOOM! there was the earth. Either way, it doesn’t particularly matter.

As I sing the songs in a language I only half understand I am in communion with my ancestors of a hundred or more generations, and, I hope, with my descendants for an equal amount of time; as I think about the half understood forces of nature being slowly unraveled by struggling human science I continue to wonder if the Almighty is the originator of the Big Bang. God only knows, but He’s not talking. Of this, though, I am certain: The whole thing is designed so that if we use our minds, not depend on revelation, we’ll figure out His physics. I read the bible. It has some powerful stories and some interesting perspectives on life and love as does Shakespeare, both being divinely inspired, and I go on with my life.

I wonder if those who insist that America is a Christian nation (in Kentucky the governor is demanding that textbooks refer to BC and AD, not to BCE and CE) intend to keep us non-Christians around once they’ve transformed our country into their theocracy. Religion ought to be like being a Red Sox fan. It should be uplifting; it can be community building. Only better. No one gets excommunicated; no one’s ever burned at the stake.

Go Sox! (=Amen).

Responding to criticism of May 26 piece

Have you read Yehuda Lev’s piece? Not yet? It’s just opposite this column, there, on page 4. Go read it now. I’ll wait for you. Tum, de, dum dum, pooh, pooh tra la la la la. OK? Finished so soon? Nice of him to give those who missed my column last issue the opportunity to read selections from it this time. Thanks Yehuda.

Where to begin, he asks. What if the boy is 14 and the girl 13? Is there an epidemic of 13-year-old girls out there getting knocked up? Should we establish social policy for all America based on the aberrant behavior of stupid lovesick puppies? Is it not possible that 13-year-old girls would get pregnant less often if they knew that abortion was not an option? I don’t know, and I imagine Yehuda doesn’t either.

I am inconsistent on the morality of women raped having an abortion. I knew it when I wrote that, and I acknowledge it still. It’s a tough call. On the one hand the baby is not guilty of any crime and deserves to live. On the other the mother has been traumatized and could feel that her body is being violated yet again. Do I have to be consistent? Is life black and white, Yehuda? OK, if you insist. Here’s a solution. Castrate the rapist and offer psychological counseling the mother. When the baby is born, she can choose to keep her child or she can choose to give it up for adoption.

Yehuda claims to find a group more defenseless than human beings developing in the wombs of their mothers. While it is hard to penetrate his impassioned prose, I think he means babies not provided with loving families, brought into this world by uncaring pro-life fanatics who (here Yehuda starts rambling a bit, or maybe this part will be edited out before you read it) choose war over feeding and educating its population, catering to the wealthy. Huh? I know there are problems in the world Yehuda, and I know there is poverty, and I know that Bush is still president. But it’s not the fault of a child conceived in the womb of a recent MBA who doesn’t want to go onto the mommy-track.

Finally Yehuda gets to the core of my argument. And then misses the mark completely. Yes, I have a problem with “Clergy for Choice” but I don’t think the group has a guilty conscience. The ones who should have a guilty conscience, he argues, are those who support governments that are anti-child, anti-poor and anti-women. If there are such clergymen in America I think they should be defrocked immediately!

My argument was with clergy who pretend that the Hebrew bible supports individual choice according to one’s own conscience and religious beliefs. This argument is comparable to that of ante-bellum southerners who thumped their bibles and quoted its passages in favor of the abomination that was slavery. Was slavery immoral? They argued it was not, that it was at least morally neutral or, some had it, a moral good, a moral necessity. I know what passages they quoted; I can’t think what the clergy for choice found in Hebrew Scriptures to leave it up to the woman to decide on her own conscience whether to have an abortion or not. I believe that the clerical spokesperson for this organization will have his say in this issue as well, so I will look for the citations with baited breath.

To me “Clergy for Choice” is in the same category as “Compassionate Conservative.” Both are disingenuous oxymorons in full gallop. Arguing the morality of abortion on demand is an example of the banality of expediency. Slave owners were moral and doing what they though best; World War II Germans were moral and doing what they thought best; suicide bombers think themselves moral and do what they think best. But saying it doesn’t make it so. Not in the ante-bellum south, not in 1940’s Europe, not now.

Should we criminalize abortion again? That genie is long ago out of the bottle and the bottle is broken. It’s a promise made by conservative politicians intent on duping the gullible while raking in the profits. Abortion is a moral issue now, no longer a legal one. Let’s look around us as Yehuda suggests and see the moral abyss we are in when we pretend that the willful destruction of the innocents is excusable.

May 26- Contra “Clergy for Choice”

Two weeks ago there was a story in these pages headlined “Pro-Choice clergy take to the airwaves” announcing that a group of Jewish and gentile clergy was forming a chapter of Clergy for Choice.

“The clergy group has begun to monitor legislative activity as well [as broadcast its opinions on the air]; in fact, it was formed as a response to a bill passed overwhelmingly last year by the R.I. Senate threatening to eliminate a woman’s right to choose.” I also favor reproductive rights (the right of fetuses to be born) and would have phrased it, “a bill passed overwhelmingly reflecting the will of the people of the state of Rhode Island to eliminate a woman’s right to terminate her pregnancy.”

The Clergy for Choice spokesperson also said that “the Hebrew bible and rabbinic writings support individual choice according to one’s own conscience and religious beliefs.” The do? The Hebrew bible gives women the right to terminate pregnancy according to her conscience and religious beliefs? In a book filled with the joy of mothers who give birth, the agony of the infertile? The Hebrew scriptures I read includes this from Deuteronomy 30:19 “I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse; therefore choose life, that you and your descendants may live.” That Hebrew bible? The rabbis? They permit the dismemberment of the fetus at the last moment if the birth is threatening the life of the mother, and yes, there is more recent responsa extending that principle to cover cases affecting the mother’s physical and mental health or in the case of rape and incest, but according to Isaac Klein, in his A Guide to Jewish Religious Practice, “When abortion is desired for reasons of convenience, however, it is forbidden.”

Barbara Kavadias from the national group of clergy for choice skips the text-based rhetoric: “We [Jews] are pro-choice because of our faith. Pro-choice is an individual choice and it is not necessarily pro-abortion. We believe that no one; not pharmacists, not doctors, not hospitals, not the government should be able to impose their religious beliefs on us.” Does Barbara really speak for Jews? Or only for Jews who agree with her? The quotation leaves us to assume that Jews favor the right of mothers to terminate their pregnancies if they are of a mind to. We do? I’m a Jew and I don’t.

By now, most of my friends are appalled. I can hear them even before they collar me at schul, school or supermarket. “Josh, how could you, a liberal, a progressive, an advocate of human rights be pro-life?” (Yeah, yeah, I know, they’ll be smart enough to say “anti-choice” but it’s more fun the way I’ve phrased it.)

In fact, I do believe in choice. I believe that women can choose to have protected or unprotected sex or abstain from sex. I believe that men should choose to take responsibility for their sexual acts. I believe that a woman whose baby to a medical certainty is going to live a short, painful, life may choose to terminate her pregnancy to spare the child inevitable suffering and early death. I believe that a woman raped may legitimately choose to abort. I believe that no one has the right to choose to deny her child the right to smell the scent of fresh cut grass, to hit a home run, to meet and marry someone they love. NOTE: THIS BECAME THIS IN PRINTED ARTICLE.WORDS IN BOLD ADDED BY EDITOR, NOT ME: I believe that no one, not even she, has the right to choose to deny her child the right to smell the scent of fresh cut grass, to hit a home run, to meet and marry someone they love. Advocating state sanctioned abortion announces to the world that we are not responsible for our actions, that actions have no consequences, that do-overs are permitted. Sometimes they are, but never in anything important, never in taking a life.

To answer the question how, if I’m a liberal can I be in the pro-life camp I’m a liberal because there is poverty out there that must be eradicated, because there are workers being exploited, because there are rain forests being cut down and rivers being polluted. Liberals take the side of the underdog, of the voiceless, of black people in the south under segregation, of the Jews in Germany under the Nazis and in Russia under the Communists. I’m a liberal because I believe government must defend of the defenseless. Is there a more defenseless group of human beings than those developing in the womb of their mothers? They have no vote, they have no voice. But they have life. That’s why I’m a liberal who is pro-life. That’s why I’m deeply saddened when clergy and laypeople chose expediency over morality, death over life.

Clergy for Conscience, anyone?

May 12- On Brandeis offering honorary degree to Tony Kushner and hosting a

When, fifty years ago, the institution that has become Roger Williams University decided to break with the YMCA and chart its own independent course, a new name was needed. In a stroke of marketing genius someone suggested “Roger Williams Jr. College.” Brilliant! In a single stroke the fledgling institution acquired an aura of antiquity and and a philosophy to live by. Williams in 1643 obtained a Charter for his colony of “the Providence Plantations in Narragansett Bay” open to all religions and the Indians were to be treated fairly, their lands purchased, not stolen. A better name could not have been appropriated.

Recently, however some students calling themselves the College Republicans began printing a scurrilous broadside they called The Hawk’s Right Eye. It spewed forth attacks on gays, Muslims, and women in what I only hoped was failed sophomoric humor. (Funding for this rag came from outside sources, not University funds.) Then the students went farther. They offered a cash prize to the author of the best essay on the subject “Why I am proud to be white.” (The Republican Party, both nationally and locally had had enough. Each condemned the students and refused to allow them to use the name Republican or any symbols of the Republican Party.)

The University, hearing the rumble of the ground as Roger Williams rolled over in his grave, condemned the contest as an outrage against the principles upon which the university rested. Mass meetings were held where people expressed their views. The president ordered the creation of an on-line journal called “Journal of Civil Discourse” and initiated a distinguished lecturer series with the theme of “reason and respect.” In time the crisis past.

Now it’s Brandeis University’s turn to be placed under the microscope. By 1948 it was already old news that the best American universities had quotas that discriminated against even the best American Jewish students. Just as physicians in the same situation founded their own hospitals, and just as Jews who were excluded from country clubs and hotels created their own, so American Jews created a non-sectarian university where Jewish students could receive an education on a par with the Ivies. What to name this new institution? Well in a stroke of marketing genius it was decided name the school after Louis D. Brandeis who its website describes as: “the distinguished associate justice of the United States Supreme Court [who] reflects the ideals of academic excellence and social justice.” What this too brief biography fails to mention is that justice Brandeis was the president of the Zionist Organization of America. Surely, though, this was one of the important considerations in selecting the name. Just as the name Roger Williams evokes fairness, openness, non-discrimination, evoking Brandeis represents American Jewish ideals including the idea that there should be a Jewish State of Israel supported by American Jewry.

But of late, this ideal has withered. The current president of the university, Jehuda Reinharz has chosen in his inaugural remarks (1995) to define the mission of the university as resting “on four solid pillars: dedication to academic excellence, non-sectarianism, a commitment to social action, and continuous sponsorship the by Jewish community.” What? That’s it? That’s our duty, to fork out dough and shut up? I think not.

Recently Brandeis has done two things that outrage the sentiments of many Jews. This is their right, of course. As an academic institution of the highest caliber it is obligated to present views both popular and fringe. At its upcoming graduation the university will grant an honorary degree to playwright Tony Kushner and its commencement speaker will be His Royal Highness Prince El Hassan bin Talal heir apparent of the Hashemite kingdom of Jordan. That Kushner deserves recognition for his distinguished literary career is beyond question. But the Zionist Organization (justice Brandeis’ old group, you will recall) protests. They quote Kushner as having said that “The biggest supporters of Israel are the most repulsive members of the Jewish community and Israel itself has got this disgraceful record. Israel is a creation of the U.S., bought and paid for.” I will spare you the rest. But note, the sound you hear is of Louis Brandeis rolling over in his grave. President Reinharz comments that Kushner is getting the award for his literary merits, that there is no political test for the honor. What else would you expect him to say?

And then there’s the Palestinian art exhibit on campus. But that’s a story for another time.

That rumble you hear…

Memories of Russia

Maybe it was the sound of the language; maybe it was the music; maybe it was both of those things combined with the time of year—mid-March, just before Passover. In any case, a couple of weeks ago, as I sat in the audience and listened to the magnificent sound of the Moscow Men’s choir as it performed at Temple Emanu-El, I was mentally and emotionally transported to another time and place in my life, another time in the life of the world. Back then, in 1989, Islamic fundamentalism was confined to the backwaters of civilization, or so we thought. The enemy was the Soviet Union, though we knew it was in decline—but in decline it was still dangerous—would this be the time it would launch a weapon of mass destruction? We didn’t know. Already first the Poles, then the Czechs, the Hungarians, even the East Germans had thrown off the burden of Soviet domination. Already the Baltic republics were showing signs of clamoring for independence, soon to be followed by the Ukrainians and other peoples subject to Russian domination.

Here in Rhode Island the Community Relations Council of the Federation had a Soviet Jewry task force. I was chairman. We wrote to refuseniks in Russia offering support, we wrote to Congress our support of the Jackson-Vanick amendment; we adopted a sister city (Rostov on Don); we marched in Washington when Gorbachev was there. And we decided to pay him a return visit. In Russia. Many said they were interested in coming, but in the end, it was only four of us—Paul and Sheila Alexander, Wayne Franklin, and myself. Paul is a physician, Sheila is a community leader, Wayne is a rabbi of Temple Emanu-El, I’m a professor of history.

For months before hand we learned some rudimentary Russian—“Yes” “no,” “please,” “thank you,” “are you sure this is what Marx had in mind?” (All right, we didn’t use that one a lot, but we did learn the Cyrillic alphabet so that we could navigate the subway system when we absented ourselves from the official tour to visit refuseniks and Hebrew teachers and “the pharmacist”). We received instructions from national Soviet-Jewry organizations (naturally there were two competing such groups—they are Jews after all). We had names of people to call, books and religious objects to bring and pharmaceuticals ranging in potency from aspirin to antibiotics, none of which were available, all of which had to be brought into the country clandestinely, so, I guess, this is my confession. I was part of a ring of international drug smugglers. There, I’ve said it.

We flew to Kennedy airport after sleepless nights—would we be caught, if so would we be prosecuted, if so, would we be found guilty, if so would we spend time in the gulag? Foolish fears I now realize, but they seemed very real at the time. At Kennedy we met the other members of our tour group and, being suspicious, wondered if these perfectly normal looking Americans were really Soviet agents provocateurs—yes we (I at least) were paranoid. Our American tour director was a nice young man who discovered a love for the Russian language and its literature in college. He now shuffled back and forth between Russia and the United States acting as translator and facilitator for visiting Americans. As soon as he saw us lifting our suitcases which weighed a ton while we pretended that they were light as feathers, he knew something was up. “Those are pretty heavy talleisim” he commented. “Talleisim?” we feigned ignorance. “No, just the stuff we’ll need for a ten day trip.” “Right.” This was not encouraging. We’d not even left New York and already we’d been spotted as smugglers. Could we trust this smiling young man?

We flew to Helsinki and from there to Moscow. The first ordeal awaited us. Our passports were checked very carefully by a uniformed young man in a booth. He looked at the passport, he looked at us, he looked at the passport, he typed something into a computer, he looked at us and again at the passport. “Purpose of visit?” (It was really less of a question than it was an accusation.) “Tourism,” I said, so did the others in their turn. “Occupation?” (Same tone of voice, all the while my right arm was separating at the joints—wrist from forearm, elbow expanding, shoulder rising as I tried to hold on to the ten ton suitcase without showing signs of strain.) “Teacher,” I said as I grit my teeth in pain, pretending it was a smile. (This question was a tricky one for Wayne. If he said “Rabbi” we were told they’d really give him the third degree or prevent him from coming in at all—certainly his suitcase would be examined, which is why we kept the incriminating materials in our bags, not his. His answer was the technically correct, though disingenuous “teacher.”)

Once this gauntlet had been passed we had customs to get through. Not all bags were checked, but there was no green sign saying “nothing to declare.” All bags and their owners had to be OK’d by a human in uniform (a ubiquitous species in Russia, it seems). Amazingly, all of us, each pretending not to know the others though obviously Sheila and Paul were traveling together, were just passed through. Some chalk on the bags, a “Welcome to the Soviet Union” from the customs agent. “Is that it?” I asked our guide. “Yes.” “That’s what I lost sleep over for two weeks?” “Wasn’t worth it was it,” he answered cryptically. Only later, on the plane coming back from Helsinki did we learn his role in getting us through customs unscathed.

The rest of the story is anticlimactic. We saw the sights of Moscow, Kiev and Leningrad, we rode the magnificent subway system, we met refusenicks and teachers of Hebrew and the pharmacist. He wasn’t really a pharmacist, of course, but a link in the chain of getting scarce drugs to sick people. Paul had a long talk with him as he described the medicines they needed brought by the next contingent of Americans coming in. Paul gave him the medicines we’d brought. We received names of refusenicks we’d not known about and hoped that that list would not be the cause of our arrest and incarceration as we passed through the external customs agents. In the Soviet Union everything had to be accounted for—how much money did you bring in, what did you buy, how much money do you have left? If we’d gotten black market rubles so that we could buy more Russian goods or leave the money with the Jews we were visiting, we’d have to account for how we could purchase things with so little money, or conversely if we were not taking much out with us, what happened to the money we brought in.

In Kiev we were not scheduled to visit Babi Yar, but we insisted and our Intourist guide relented. There’s not much to see there now, but we knew had had happened. Between 1941 and 1943 over 100,000 Jews had been killed there. The monument, with tablets in Russian, Ukrainian and Yiddish states only that over 100,000 “citizens of Kiev and prisoners of war” were executed there. The Jews, apparently, deserve no special recognition. Except from us. Wayne, Paul, Sheila and I, along with a few others from our group said kaddish in memory of those who had been massacred in the ravine the Germans, and later the Soviets, tried to hide by filling it in, making it a level meadow, disguising the remains of the atrocity.

We shopped in the stores that Russian citizens were not allowed to enter, where only foreign currency was accepted, where goods scarce or impossible to find in the stores of the Soviet Union were readily available to foreigners. So, we came with lists of what our new friends needed, and we bought. We also gave. We brought jeans from America (am I the last person on Earth still to refer to them as dungarees?), a hot commodity in the Soviet Union’s black market which could be sold by the Jews who had been let go from their jobs because they had had the temerity to ask to leave, some of them years ago denied their exit visas, and having to make do however they could. Those jeans, we hoped, could be converted into cash. On the streets people who wanted to buy my sneakers—off my feet, approached me with rubles to purchase the rare western footwear. I politely declined. It was too cold to walk barefoot in Moscow in March. On the plane flying from Kiev to Leningrad my neighboring passenger noticed my Cassio wristwatch which told the time, is a calculator, holds phone numbers and appointments, is a stop watch and a timer. By rubbing his thumb against his middle finger he indicated with what is apparently a universal sign that he wanted to buy it from me. “I don’t speak Russian,” I politely said, and feigned sleep.

When it was time to go, we had our lists of medicines and refuseniks and our gifts for friends and relatives back home and we endured the wait, as we had to pass through external customs. Sheila had most of the incriminating papers in her suitcase. This was a clear-cut example of hiding behind women’s skirts. We had been told that Russian men were uncomfortable rummaging through ladies undergarments, so the papers were under her underwear. As the unsmiling customs agent opened Sheila’s suitcase, it tipped and her clothing and the papers we had so carefully secreted went flying onto the floor. Flustered at the sight of these garments, he helped her to scoop everything up, including the incriminating documents, all of which he hastily shoved willy-nilly back into her case and (we think) apologized profusely for the inconvenience.

Once on the Finnair plane, we felt safer, but even more so once we had taken off. In Helsinki Wayne told Peter, our American guide what we had done. He laughed at our naivety. As we’d thought, he’d spotted us immediately for what we were. In the Moscow airport he found a pretty customs agent and encouraged her to flirt with the agent examining our bags. The agent, apparently thinking that the girl was really interested in him, paid no interest in us, and so into the belly of the beast we were allowed to enter with all our contraband. Thanks Peter.

We came back to America filled with stories of our adventures, just in time to celebrate Passover with the Matzah we’d bought in Leningrad at the only Jewish bakery in town. It was the best tasting Matzah I’d ever eaten, made with the hands of people as much prisoners in their country as the ancient Hebrews had been in Egypt. As I sat around our Seder tables and recounted our experiences to friends and relatives the idea of freedom suddenly meant a lot more than it ever had before. There was no Moses to lead the Jews out of the Soviet Union, certainly Paul, Sheila, Wayne, and I were no Moses, but we had done our bit to bring cheer and supplies to a people cut off from the rest of their people. We had let them know that we knew of them, that we were working for their liberation and eventual re-settlement in Israel or in the United States. I don’t know how much good we actually did for them, but we each felt that we had made a contribution in our small way to the betterment of mankind. I think (though cannot prove) that the international effort to free the Jews of the Soviet Union played a huge part in the disintegration of that great empire. Once the Jews started agitating for their liberty, others followed; once the Jews broke the silence and said, this is not working, let us leave, others joined the chorus.

And a couple of weeks ago, the Moscow Men’s Chorus, singing in Temple Emanu-El, brought it all back to life in my mind. Paul, Sheila, Wayne, I think we did good.

Dog/squirrel/cat story, for laughs

On Friday last I ran some errands. Upon my return I heard the cleaning lady yelling at Morgan the Wonder Dog. “You get down from there, naughty dog!” and then the reply, “Ha, ha, ho ho, you’re not Josh, I don’t have to do what you say.” Now, this came as a surprise, because I thought Morgan the Wonder Dog spoke only to me. In any case, up on the kitchen counter, staring intently at a squirrel hanging upside down on the bird feeder, was Morgan the Wonder Dog.

“What are you doing there?” I asked menacingly.

“She made me do it, she always makes me get up here.”

“She was up there all morning,” snitched the cleaning lady. “I didn’t put her up there,” she added nervously.

“I know, I know,” I reassured; “she has quite an imagination.”

Twice again the dog was up on the counter, either staring at the squirrel at the bird feeder or just staring at the bird feeder in anticipation. I determined to put a stop to these shenanigans. Thinking that the squirrel was aided and abetted by the table we have under the window, I went out onto the deck to take it away, carefully placing it along the side of the deck near the enclosed porch’s roof. It being a beautiful day, I left Morgan outside on patrol.

A cry from the cleaning lady alerted that something was wrong. Again. I went to the kitchen window but there was no squirrel. I looked out the window and saw that there was also no dog. She, in her infinite wisdom, had used the table I had so conveniently placed at her disposal to abscond from the deck onto the adjacent porch roof. So, there she was, running to the edge of the roof, stopping, looking down, wondering if she could survive the eight foot drop to the ground, backing off, running up again, considering again, backing off again, but I could see that her courage was mounting.

Then I saw the cat. “Oh, gods,” I implored, “don’t let her see the cat.” I opened the living room window and called to her. “Morgan, come here, I have cheese for you.” “No you don’t,” she said as she edged closer to the edge. “I’ll get it, you wait there,” I implored. So I ran the length of the living room, turned right through the foyer, right again through the dining room, through the breakfast room, into the kitchen where I threw open the refrigerator and tried to remember which kind of cheese she liked best—mozzarella, cheddar, Swiss? I grabbed a block of cheddar and retraced my steps, sticking my head out the window and ... no dog. She had jumped back over the rail onto the deck. To the deck I sauntered, gave her some cheese, brought her back in the house and sat down to work, again.

Another shriek from the cleaning lady. Now what? Gevalt! I’d left the window open and out through it Morgan had leaped onto the roof of the enclosed porch. Again. “Damn!” “Stay,” I commanded, rushed through the house to the refrigerator to get some cheese, back to the window where the dog had remained. I offered her the food, she came in, I closed the window. Our problems were not yet over.

I had noticed that the squirrel walked along the deck railing and leaped from it onto the sill of the kitchen window, from which it then jumped onto the birdfeeder. OK, what can I do about this? “Crisco!” was the obvious answer. If I coated the sill with a thin veneer of Crisco, the squirrel would leap, skid and fall to the deck floor, hopefully without doing itself any injury. So that’s what I prepared to do. What I hadn’t noticed was that as I opened the window, the squirrel was already in mid-flight towards it. It hit my outstretched arm and ricocheted up my arm into the kitchen. The other thing I’d not noticed was that the cat I’d spotted before had by now managed to get onto the deck and seeing its prey jump through our kitchen window, it decided on the spur of the moment to follow suit. So now I had a panicked squirrel being chased by a cat who only too late realized that there was a dog in the house who hated cats.

My right hand was also coated in Crisco. The next thing I knew, the trio was running first around, then through the breakfast room, into the dining room where the cleaning lady was standing on the radiator holding her skirt above her knees shouting (actually it more like screaming) something in Andalusian. The squirrel dove under the living room couch where the cat thought for a moment it would stalk it until suddenly remembering the dog hot on its tail, so it leaped five feet up onto the mantle, skidding along the surface, sending chackas scattering in all directions. Then, as the cat was skidding, the dog chasing it barking, the squirrel cowering, Penney came home.

As the door opened, the dog, always anxious to be outside, gave up pursuit of the cat, and headed out the door; the cat, seeing its chance to escape, jumped down from the mantle and fled after her. The squirrel who was watching all this from its vantage point below the couch took its opportunity to run through Penney’s legs to safety. The cleaning lady was still on top of the radiator screaming in Andalusian, skirt hiked. Penney took a quick look at the scene as it was unfolding and asked, “How come the cat is chasing the dog and the squirrel is chasing the cat?” This was too difficult to explain, so rather than try, we helped the cleaning lady down from the radiator and the three of us cleaned up the mess.

And what does all of this have to do with the Jewish Question, you ask? What? You have to ask? How do you prepare your house for Passover?

Passover’s implied obligations to the world i.e. Darfur

Passover looms. It is getting to be a competitive sport, have you noticed? We are having 15 for the first Seder and the same for the second. Oh, but my friend X is having 18; Y counters that she’s having 30 but Z wins this year’s competition with 50 “Wait ’til next year,” grumbles X. Oh, and then there’s the time competition. Our Seder lasts until 11:00; ours ’til midnight; ours ends at 2:00 in the morning; ours lasts until the next Seder begins! Up and up goes the ante. We read most of the haggadah; we read the whole haggadah; so do we but we add to it; so do we but we sing each song in as many tunes as we know for each. Huff, puff. At Chez Stein (which when the children we young enough to live at home was called “Bedlam Hall”) the Seder will be over before 11:00, the company will be large enough so that it will be festive, but not so large that people won’t be able to talk to each other; we will read the haggadah as appropriate and an edited version of Exodus; we will discuss the moral implications of the story. Dayenu. Oh, and each year, though I say I won’t, each year I promise to remember but always forget that old Buddhist mantra: “Ohmmmmmmm, don’t be a chazar, Ohmmmmmmm.”

But while Passover is marked at its beginning with great feasts, at it end there is always Yiskor. As I help my wife set the table, as I smell the delicious fragrances wafting in from the kitchen, as I greet friends and relatives who come to our door bearing wine and flowers and good cheer, as we begin by asking the four questions, there is always, in the back of my mind, a fifth question, one asked by both the wise and the wicked son, to which I have no satisfactory answer. What does this mean to me? What does liberation mean? Is it personal freedom I celebrate or the potential of all men to be free from…from what? Franklin Roosevelt spoke of four freedoms, two positive, and two negative (freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, freedom from fear). The US Constitution grants others—freedom to assemble and petition the government, freedom to vote, freedom (if in a well regulated militia) to bear arms and freedom to feel protected in our homes.

In Darfur the government and the Arab Janjaweed, randomly select villages and destroy them, killing the men, raping the women. In Afghanistan a man was to be executed for converting from Islam to Christianity. Am I, a Jew in Rhode Island, safe and secure here, free here, well fed here, to try to do anything about the Darfur millions? And the one man in Afghanistan? What can I do? It’s not likely that I can get onto a plane and rescue the poor guy or organize a brigade of overweight, exercise-deprived college professors to stand guard over the huddled masses in the Sudan and Chad. I can write to my congressman and to the president; I can sign a petition, but all of that seems woefully inadequate. In effect, I’m free, but powerless. I am free just enough to be tantalized—I can see the problem, but can’t resolve it, not as an individual anyway, but as part of a mass of other free people, then maybe, just maybe, our freedom, our liberation can be shared with the world. Look what we have done as collective individuals, often under Jewish leadership and inspiration—we have ended slavery, we have ended Jim Crow, we have organized labor, we have created public education—and it all goes back to that story of the liberation from Egypt, that great exemplar, that magnificent role model. What was done for us once, we now can do for others. Is it sufficient each Passover to read of the liberation of our ancestors? Is it sufficient each week that at the Shabbat table I thank God for the liberation from Egypt? Is that the secret message of Dayenu, It is enough? Is it enough that we know that Sisyphusian challenges await the free on behalf of those still enslaved by fear, persecution and economic deprivation? Not for Jew it isn’t. There’s always something more to be done in the constant challenge of repairing the world.

So our table will groan with the weight of the food, our friends and relatives will leave the house with their bellies full and their spirits lifted, but I’ll know that at the end of the holiday I’ll stand and recite Yiskor for my mother; I’ll know that somewhere the Janjaweed is lurking in Africa, somewhere there is hunger, somewhere there is still slavery. Dayenu?