tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-67055491541713251652024-03-23T03:16:49.236-07:00Yeshivas Ye'ush MiDa'as"Say not: 'How was it that the former days were better than these?' for it is not out of wisdom that you inquire about this." [Koheles 7:10]The Odd Coghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04631555699756710917noreply@blogger.comBlogger144125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6705549154171325165.post-43282686997239568892024-03-21T19:40:00.000-07:002024-03-21T19:40:40.587-07:00Post-Purim Post-Part(y)mAs I did last year, I spent the bulk of the past three weeks expending my journalistic energies writing and producing the local Purim Shpiel, basically our version of the State of the Upper West Side. Unlike last year’s production however, I did manage to slip in a political statement of sorts, almost partly unwillingly: during our “Purim Update” [modeled on SNL’s “Weekend Update”], I came onstage as the President for a mock interview, in oversized ears…and a kaffiyeh draped around my shoulders. <br /> <br />I had actually run this by a few people around the neighborhood during the scripting phase of the shpiel and I was surprised by the number of people who seemed to be find the notion offensive…not so much the physical alteration [grudgingly admitting that I was not, exactly, employing a caricature analogous to blackface], but the implication—or implications—regarding the President’s perceived religious and Judeophobic inclinations. It occurred to me that, obviously, some Orthodox Jews with more liberal political inclinations who voted for Obama may feel somewhat defensive about their electoral choice, as if they are trying to pre-empt accusations of placing personal sentiment over communal responsibility [as you will see below, I would not nearly go that far], and my costume was another reminder of how they felt. It also occurred to me that, like the New Yorker cover of the Obamas as, respectively, an African Muslim and an Angela Davis clone, my costume may have been a slight dig at those in my community who actually believe the absolute worst about the President.<br /><br />As can be evidenced by my writings in this [and my other] blog, I have had serious misgivings about this President and his Administration, not only [but certainly not least] due to his Middle East policies—although, again, I have been fully open about that particular “bias”. However, I have been equally uncomfortable with the tactics of the far-right tarring the President as either Muslim, or a terrorist, or a communist. [V’hki teima that he’s a socialist—well, keep in mind that at a recent CPAC conference, Newt Gingrich quoted Camus and Orwell to warn against the dangers of socialism, forgetting that both Camus and Orwell were democratic socialists. Lomed mikol adam, indeed.] This may be due to my LEFTOVER goyish college-nurtured liberal sentiments. It also might be because, sometimes, extremism in defense of anything is a vice, as can be evidenced the damage done to cause of anti-communism by Joe McCarthy.<br /><br />However, should one need more “traditional” evidence, one need only look at the Purim story.<br /><br />One of the best treatments of Megillas Esther I have seen is Yoram Hazony’s The Dawn, which is basically a political analysis of the sefer. One of the points Hazony makes is that Mordechai’s refusal to bow down before Haman was not necessarily just a religious statement [although <a href="https://www.koltorah.org/halachah/why-did-mordechai-refuse-to-bow-down-to-haman-by-rabbi-chaim-jachter">Rabbi Howard Jachter’s Why Did Mordechai Refuse to Bow Down to Haman?</a> basically covers the issue of Haman’s questionable status as Avoda Zara], but also a political statement: Mordechai was essentially protesting Achashversosh’s dispensing of the political process and instituting a totalitarian dictatorship through Haman in a specific response to Bigsan and Teresh’ assassination attempt.<br /><br />With regard to my point about an extremist ad hominem approach to opposing Obama and his policies, my points from the Esther story would be this: one, we see that Mordechai’s response was measured, in that it took nine years from the assassination attempt to the genocide decree; two, his refusal to bow down was not even unanimously approved by the rabbinnic authorities of the time; and three, as the gemara points out, Achashverosh was as much an eliminationist antisemite as Haman, but Mordechai never takes any political action against him.<br /><br />I don’t think anyone can characterize Obama as an eliminationist anti-Semite, and although I would certainly agree that his foreign policy is on the whole not friendly to Israel, I can think of at least three other Presidents whose policies were even less favorable [Carter, Bush I, and Eisenhower]. I think any communal effort expended at painting Obama himself as an anti-Semite on the level of, say, Bin Laden or Ahmadinejad only serves to hurt our credibility in our fight against the real antisemites. The story of Mordechai’s political machinations may teach us this: mistakes will be made, possibly even ones of life or death; but we must always be judicious and never prejudicial.The Odd Coghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04631555699756710917noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6705549154171325165.post-30175110876014931862024-03-21T19:39:00.000-07:002024-03-21T19:39:33.325-07:00Tazria-Metzora: HousesTazria-Metzora: House Falling Down
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This series of double parshiyot that deal with what might be considered the simultaneous signs of physical and spiritual decay, and their sometime attendant internal exiles, being with a most interesting version of internal exile: birth. A new mother is immediately tamei on the level of a nidah and, depending on the sex of the child, is barred from entering sanctuaries for either 40 or 80 days.
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As was discussed last week, even the most sublime simchas have elements of pain built into them; this is another example.
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Yet while the bulk of these parshiyot deal with insults to one's physical body, towards the end of Metzora we are introduced to the nig'ei habayis, which can cause either removal from one's residence [another from of exile], or even the destruction of the building.
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Rashi notes that these occasional demolitions were blessings in disguise: they would lead to the revelation of riches hidden by the Emorites in anticipation of the Israealite invasion of Canaan. Yet, Rav Dessler brings down a Rambam in Shlach that notes that one of the "ruses" used to convince Moshe Rabbeinu to send the meraglim--or, what was touted as the most salient reason--was that they needed to find these purported riches, or there would be a chilul hashem involved in the possible perception of a false prophecy. And it worked.
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This brings two inyanim full circle: the "blessing" of one internal exile [the negaim] indirectly leading to a longer exile [the 40 years in the midbar], and said "blessing" that was [usually] deemed to be a corrective to lashon hara leading--however tortuously--to what was is presented to us as one of the pardigmatic cases of lashon hara, the report of the meraglim. [And, since the chet took place on tisha b'av, it led to the ultimate demolition[s]: the churbanos.]
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This ostensibly bizarre series of loosely connecting patterns are further indicative of the circular, rather than linear, nature of spiritual battles and the rewards and correctives inherent in them. However, one might find an even more interesting angle. Inherent in much of chassidus is the notion that one really doesn't have bechira chofshis, in line with the insistence that G-d is the direct force behind even the smallest leaf movement. [As far as I'm concerned, the conflict between hakol tzafui and reshus nitna has been largely reconciled, but bear with me.]
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The element of bechira tha IS left according to chassidus is in the moral realm: in other words, in every occurrence is an opportunity--or, taken to another level, THE opportunity--to decide which side you're on, or possibly, just to give some import to the event that one might not perceive to be there.
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Regardless of chassidus, one doesn't necessarily enter the realm of human choice to see the point. Rather, one can [see gemara in Berachos 9th perek on bracha al tova me'ein rahaand vice versa]
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<br />The Odd Coghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04631555699756710917noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6705549154171325165.post-60602247084904688842023-02-03T10:31:00.012-08:002023-10-17T14:37:15.927-07:00 Beshalach: Pharaoh vs Amalek--Two Party System?<p><br /></p><p class="p3" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">A prominent USA rabbi was known to have said that America might not be our enemy, but they are not necessarily our friend.</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p><p class="p3" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">The <a href="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/campaigns/pat-buchanan-retires-gop"><span class="s1" style="color: #dca10d;">encomia for Pat Buchanan</span></a> following his recent retirement illustrated that this tendency is still alive among out ostensible allies on the Right, if not as much as their counterparts on the left.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>None of the tributes in <a href="https://www.nysun.com/article/pat-buchanan-last-of-the-happy-warriors-lays-down-his-mighty-pen"><span class="s1" style="color: #dca10d;">journals that are usually sympathetic to genuine Jewish causes</span></a> saw fit to mention Buchanan’s more than three-decade record of rabid antisemitism; <a href="https://www.nationalreview.com/2023/01/buchanan-retires-his-pen/"><span class="s1" style="color: #dca10d;">one even went farther</span></a> by mentioning how Buchanan convinced Nixon to airlift arms to Israel during the Yom Kippur war, as if Buchanan was an ardent Zionist.</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p><p class="p3" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">It was vaguely reminiscent of this week’s parsha, Beshalach, with Pharaoh and the Egyptians’ apparent volte-face after releasing the Jews, now all hell-bent on returning them to servitude if not driving them into the sea: another erstwhile ally turned implacable foe.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>That then brought up the question of whether the Pharaonic analog would also apply to our former President, one Donald J. Trump, who according to a significant portion of the punditry was the primary vehicle in making Buchanan’s once-fringe “America First” political philosophy and actual political reality. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p><p class="p3" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">The Pharaonic analogy had been made before: Bernard-Henri Levy had once compared Trump to the Pharaoh of Parshas Shemos “who knew not Joseph”, though at the time that BHL made that assessment, Trump had not yet put in place his at the time groundbreaking philosemitic policies, including the embassy move to Jerusalem and the Abraham Accords, so until more recent events, it had looked like the Pharaonic analogies were wildly off base, though this write cautioned that there might later prove to be a more accurate analog, the Darius mentioned in the Babylonian Talmud Tractate Rosh Hashanah 3b-4a, who made sure when he allowed the Jews to rebuild the Temple to insist that the support beams be made of wood, so he could pull down the edifice in case of disloyalty; the Rabbis’ view of Darius’ ostensible philosemitism was rather jaundiced as a result. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>I suggret that perspective is the correct one, at least as long as Trump doesn’t get back into office.</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p><p class="p3" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">But who else could Trump be then, really? <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p><p class="p3" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Esav?<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Was his “kiss” a genuine attempt at brotherhood or a cover for something more sinister? <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>So did Trump really mean everything did with his ostenisbly philo-semitic policies, or was it just a prolonged Esav kiss?</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p><p class="p3" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">In fact, his speeches that the Jews “owe” him sound less like Esav and more like Lavan’s “everything you see is mine”.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>At least Esav said “let is what yours be yours”.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>So he may be even worse than Esav on that score.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p><p class="p3" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Further, any “debt” we might have incurred was wiped off the books once he had a powwow with Nick Fuentes, Kanye West and Milo Yiannopolous, the three of who might be reminiscent of Pharaoh’s three advisers at the beginning of the Exodus story who advised him about how to manage his genocidal intentions. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Trump might have been under the impression that he had to choose between orthodox jews and the alt right and since he “gave us Israel”, we’d be disloyal by criticizing his association with the alt right.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>The fact that Milo accused Trump of TLing the Jews — and that Trump is the one is debt to the alt right, and yet Trump would accuse the Jews of stabbing in the back—is a rather clear indicator of where Trump’s true loyalties ultimately lie. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p><p class="p3" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">One might even draw—however loosely—a parallel between Trump and Martin Luther, who expressed sympathy for the way the Church treated Jews around the time of the Theses but who turned on them spectacularly when he realized a mass conversion was not imminent, possibly giving voice to what might have been a blueprint for a Holocaust.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>One might even draw a parallel with another President, one Mr. Barack Obama, whose acolytes love to tout “Obama signed the $38B MOU” and “Obama funded Iron Dome”, while ignoring that the former was really the work of Congress and was laced with political “poison pills” by Obama and his Cabinet, and that Iron Dome was basically a method of control to keep the Israelis form taking what would have been completely justified if draconian defensive military actions but which were perceived by various hand wringers as disproportionate.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>In the case of Trump, one wonder whether the Jerusalem Embassy move was really all the work of David Friedman and whether the Abraham Accords were ultimately Jared Kushner’s brainchild, for which their boss reaps all rewards.</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p><p class="p3" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Trump, of course, has absolutely no salient historical frame of reference due to what one might call self-imposed intellectual limitations, so all of this would be completely lost on him.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>What shouldn’t be is that Friedman basically convinced Trump to not pursue his dreams of the “Deal Of The Century” because Mahmoud Abbas was unreliable, and that Jared—despite his efforts<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>paying off with the Abraham Accords because of his connections in the Middle East—will never be good enough for Don because he was born Jewish.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>(Don’t be fooled into thinking that Trump is any more or less philosemitics because of Ivanka’s conversion: as far as Don is concerned the marriage was another good business deal, and he probably hasn’t forgiven Ivanka for making him modify his second post-Charlottesville message in 2017.)</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p><p class="p3" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Do I regret my vote?<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>I didn’t vote for him in 2016; I voted 3rd party.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>For most of his term, I was actually pleasantly surprised that he did carry out what he committed to do, especially after he forced Tillerson and McMaster out, and especially after the predictions of quislings like Peter Beinart that the embassy move would lead to a third intifada proved to be completely unfounded.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>The <i>shtadlanim</i> like Friedman, Mort Klein at the ZOA et al have nothing to be ashamed of.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>They did their jobs.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Some people did go overboard, mostly at the beginning, with what sounded like a near messianic lauding of then-candidate Trump, and there were more than a few admonitions that it was almost a mitzvah to vote for him, which—considering his being a policy neophyte at the time—was at the very least a questionable “psak”.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>However, in 2020, one could find Orthodox-driven admonitions about it being a mitzvah to vote for Biden, so again, the Left has no moral ground to stand on here either.</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p><p class="p3" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Was Liz Cheney right?<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>No.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>In fact, if Trump is Lavan, Cheney is Korach.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>She voted with Trump 98% of the time, so January 6 couldn’t have been much of a shock for the spawn of the Patriot Act.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Her “principled” (in this case, “prin[sic]pled”) opposition was never about “democracy”: it<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>was about a perceived power vacuum, like Korach saw with Moshe after the meraglim, and she would move in to the top GOP spot in Congress and restore her daddy’s legacy after it had been trashed by Trump.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>You don’t go on HaMaSNBC as a “conservative” unless it’s all about you.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>So ultimately she’s just as “principled”<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>as she thinks Trump is.</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p><p class="p3" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">What does that say about the Orthos who supported him?<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Nothing.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>It was <i>shtadlanus</i>, and it miraculously worked for a time.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Consider Yaakov was forced to run to Lavan.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>We were forced to run to Trump.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Now we can better deal with the Esavs of the Democratic party who pretend to be our “<i>achi</i>”<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>(e.g. Obama proclaiming “I’m a liberal jew”; condemning Ye, but not Jay Electronica.)</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p><p class="p3" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">What about the “I told you so’s”? <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p><p class="p3" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Come off it.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Most of those come from people who either backed or wouldn’t criticize the Dems for working with the Squad—who remain more dangerous than even a Kanye or Milo or Fuentes, because they MAKE policy and are considered crusaders [sic] for freedom.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>The “Torah Trumps Hate” people may have had a point for about 5 minutes in 2016, until they ran and kissed aoc’s hindquarters on twitter, proving it wasn’t about protecting Judaism, but about making wokeism a mitzvah.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>If you didn’t like Trump in 2016, you didn’t vote for the equally or worse other side that photo-opted with Linda Sarsour, celebrated aoc and Ilhan Omar and never disavowed Farrakahn.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>You could have sat out or voted for Johnson.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>But no—you were ultimately as progressive as Trump was ostensibly “fascist”. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>So you have no moral standing to complain either.</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p><p class="p3" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Now, there are thankfully viable GOP candidates who can win even by keeping the bulk of the good Trump policies but without the baggage.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>So you can vote for them.</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p><p class="p3" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">The one legitimate critique that can be leveled at Trump’s Orthodox Jewish supporters is that much as there was no h<i>akaras hatov</i> for some of the really Judeophilic Trump policies in quarters other than the Orthodox, there really was — even from the beginning — way too much willingness to view Trump in quasi-messianic terms, however remotely.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Hopefully that has now been cured. Ultimately, this may prove to be less of a case of “<i>Esav sonei es Yaakov</i>” more than “<i>Al Tivtechu Bindivim</i>”, which in any case is supposed to be the beauty of the American system.</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p><p class="p3" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">In fact it isn’t the “Jews” that owe Trump.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>He owes us for being his steadiest supporter in the face on some of what was at the time the worst adhominy in the history of politics, even if some if was invited and self inflicted.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>He is actually the ungrateful one by turning on his most ardent supporters, as opposed to the Milo/Ye/Nick cabal who were trying to make him look bad while he still chasing after their approval.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>He never thought we were the cool kids.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>We were the nerds with yarmulkes who did his taxes.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>He now deserves even worse opprobrium from us than anyone else.</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p>The Odd Coghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04631555699756710917noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6705549154171325165.post-10035195477296474962023-01-08T18:21:00.010-08:002023-01-10T16:45:10.716-08:00Yayechi: When Mega Is Malign<p><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue";">Reading a few different articles on the parsha this past week, a piece about Yaakov Avinu on his deathbed by <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Explorations-Expanded-Bereishit-Ari-Kahn/dp/1947857290">Rabbi Ari Kahn</a> stood out: what was Yaakov’s biggest fear as all his sons all stand before him?</span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Yaakov thought: maybe some of my sons are like Yishmael and Esav? <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Why was Yaakov so afraid of this?<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>In a certain sense, the conflict between Yosef and his brothers almost mirrored what happened with Yaakov’s brother and uncle: they were permanently detached from the family’s mission because of an irrevocable split between siblings.</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Rabbi Kahn details why the fear might have manifested itself: Esav and Yishmael each exemplified a particular corruption of as aspect of the mission represented by the first two Avos, and Yaakov Avinu thought that corruption might have filtered into the shevatim.</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">To wit:</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Avraham Avinu represents chesed; Yishmael represented the corruption of chesed, using chesed to seduce women, who ostensibly “owed” him the “chesed” of “free love”. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>According to one medrash hunted and abused both single and married women, and may have even abused [or attempted to abuse] a very young Yitzchak [based on the term “metzachek”].</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Yitzchak Avinu represents Din and gevurah;<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Esav, as Rabbi Kahn explains, corrupted din by twisting self control into control of others, including his penchant for murder and rapine, which itself turns “gevurah” into crude strong-arming.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>It made sense that Esav married Yishmael’s daughter: he had a lot in common with his father in law.</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Esav and Yishmael came to mind with the <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-64122628">recent arrest of mega-influencer Andrew Tate</a>, the revelations that he seems to have backed up his proudly proclaimed misogyny by allegedly engaging in human trafficking, and the further disturbing revelations that he’s amassed a <a href="https://nypost.com/2023/01/07/uk-schools-re-educating-teens-brainwashed-by-andrew-tate-report/">cult-like following among school age males</a> seem to indicate that not only does Tate represent a modern day-“marriage” of Biblical Esavic and Yishmaelite tendencies, but his cult-like persona recalls some of the worst tendencies of<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>of Bilaam, and pagan tendencies of the “Voluptuaries” of Bamidbar 11 and 12.</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Let’s start with the paganism first, as that was how Tate got caught in the first place: aside from Tate’s penchant for lauding his financial wealth and his sexual conquests, Tate was apparently so obsessed with his <a href="https://nypost.com/2023/01/04/2-9m-buggati-among-11-cars-seized-from-andrew-tate/">collection of Bugattis</a> that he felt compelled to tweet at a girl half his age about how many he possessed and their “enormous emissions”.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Rav Joseph Soloveitchik [“The Rev”] used to refer to the incident at Kivrot Hataa’vah as “The Graves of the Voluptuaries” which he asserted was a paradigm of paganism: in the people’s frenzied collective attempt to collect heaps of quail, “infinite gathering became an end in itself”. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">The persistence of Tate’s paganism might be more ironic considering Tate’s recent <a href="https://www.sportskeeda.com/esports/news-why-andrew-tate-convert-islam-breaking-streamer-said-conversion">public religious conversion</a> and his professions of “women are precious” in the face of his alleged rapine and <a href="https://nypost.com/2023/01/06/andrew-tates-sex-cam-girls-branded-with-owned-by-tate-tattoos/">slavedriving</a>. These are reminiscent of the fake religious persona Esav presented for his father Yitzchak [“How do we tithe straw”?]<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>It also matches with the sentiments of Bilaam: “<i>tamus nafhsi most yesharim</i>” —let me die the death of the righteous [as long as I don’t have to live like one. St. Augustine—before he became a “ba'al teshuva”—once said “Give me chastity, but not yet.”<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Tate apparently never planned on getting that far.]<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>While some of Tate’s new co-religionists—<a href=" https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2022/11/22/andrew-tate-red-pill-muslim#:~:text=In%20late%20October%2C%20a%20video,confirmed%20Tate's%20conversion%20to%20Islam">female ones, particularly</a>—have seen through the ruse of his his ostensible spiritual transformation, others—especially those who celebrate terrorism and theofascism—have celebrated it, and he himself has <a href=" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGWGcESPltM">sung the praises of the Taliban</a> enough that they expressed “<a href="https://nypost.com/2023/01/02/taliban-reportedly-worried-about-andrew-tate-after-arrest/">worry</a>” about his arrest.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Again: a perfect marriage of Esav and Yishmael.</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">And another: Esav and Yishmael were both hunters; Tate has parlayed his MMA championships into his career as a violent exploiter of women, as well as his expressed sentiments in <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGWGcESPltM">interviews</a> that ultimately violence is the only solution to anything.</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">One more look between Tate and Esav is how Esav admired [to a point] his father, so much so that Chazal occasionally hold up Esav as a model of “kibud av”.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>However, Esav also was known to hate his mother, despite the fact that—as Rashi notes—he trusted his mother more than his wives. Tate admires his father: what about his mother who raised him after their parents divorce?<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>[Esav Harasha and Andrew Tate: serious mommy issues?]</p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Further, take both Esav's and Yishmael's penchant for rapine, and Yishmael's aforementioned possible tendency toward exploitation of children: taking into account both Tate's<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVp3WsPuOFM"> statements about younger women</a> and the allegations that he<a href="https://nypost.com/2023/01/06/andrew-tate-messaged-underaged-girls-romanian-pols-daughter/"> may not even drawn the line that high</a>, and we have yet another parallel.</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Finally, Tate’s cultic following on and off the internet brings to mind “Bilaam”, the “worldly” prophet sought out by everyone for his presumed powers who essentially set himself up as the “guru” or amorality in his time. The Talmud [TB Sanhedrin 106] notes that “any possible explanation you can derive to Bilaam’s detriment, always derive to his detriment”. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>It is imperative that one derive what can about Tate to his absolute detriment in a Balaamic sense.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Too many adult men—and, more disturbingly, too many school-age males—admire this man and have been manning the barricades to defend him.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>The man has no redeeming qualities, and it must be made apparent that if you admire him to the point that you think he can help you with your life, you’re a sucker, and if you genuinely admire his ideology and way of life, you have a serious character issue.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>For starters.</p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">I guess the one thing we might be be gald about is that while Tate manifests the tendencies of Esav, Yishmael, Bilaam, and the erev rav of at Kivros haTaavah, he hasn't shown his full Amalekite side.<br /><br />Yet.</p>The Odd Coghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04631555699756710917noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6705549154171325165.post-68579852707305051372022-01-21T09:53:00.003-08:002022-01-21T09:53:51.917-08:00Beshalach-Yisro: Chizuk vs Chidud<p> <span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px;">In last week’s parsha, Pharaoh hardened his heart for the last time, and lost everything. (Too bad he couldn’t get a</span><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px;"> </span><a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-00111-9" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px;">heart transplant from a pig</a><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px;">. It might have helped.)</span></p><p class="p3" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">In this weeks parsha, Yisro is heartened by the Israelite victories, yet he still gets goosebumps—vayichad Yisro—about the other side’s losses.</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p><p class="p3" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">The suicide of Chaim Walder following the flood of credible allegations of some of the worst sorts of abuse against the children he ostensibly championed and upon which his reputation and celebrity were built engendered three distinct reactions from religious authorities here and in Israel.</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p><p class="p3" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">The most obvious morally correct responses are not in need of much examination or analysis. Suffice it to say that that one wishes that these reactions had been the <i>de rigeur</i> responses, and that they would have set the tone for the overall communal response. </p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p><p class="p3" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Excerpts [but these pieces should be read from beginning to end]:</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><p class="p3" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><a href="https://moderntoraleadership.wordpress.com/2021/12/30/the-walder-case-and-suicide-lessons-learned-and-not-learned/">The Walder Case and Suicide: Lessons Learned and Not Learned</a>: “I also think that Walder’s direct victims may celebrate his death, just as Bnei Yisroel sang about the Mitzrim drowning in the Reed Sea even while Hashem silenced the angels…Walder’s apparent suicide changes nothing. We cannot allow the risk of suicide – however sincere and realistic – to prevent the exposure of predators. In this case, I can’t see how anything that was done should have been changed to prevent that outcome...The evidence that has emerged since makes his guilt certain for all practical human purposes. He committed suicide only following the emergence of that evidence, with the certainty that more would emerge.”</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p><p class="p3" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><a href="https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/our-kids-need-protecting-not-our-community/">Our Kids Need Protecting, Not Our Community:</a><b> </b>“Our community is not getting bad press because we have child molesters. Sadly, every society in the world has its share. We are getting slammed precisely because some folks seem to care more about our reputation and less about the safety of our children and the trauma of abuse survivors.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Our public image will dramatically improve when we direct our focus inward; reporting abusers to the authorities, encouraging victims to come forward without fear of retribution, helping them get professional counseling, and making research-based, child safety training for children, parents and educators a top priority.”</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p><p class="p3" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><a href="https://jewishlink.news/features/48373-on-books-in-a-jewish-home-on-evil-and-on-chilul-hashem">On Books in a Jewish Home, on Evil and on Chilul Hashem</a>: “The statements that were made at the funeral and were quoted in articles in the name of specific rabbis—whether the rabbis really said those things or not—that the big lesson from this story is the damage of lashon hara, were at best misplaced, and at worst yet another example of wicked manipulation. Even more problematic, this message has a direct impact on victims of abuse, who in the future will not come forward and report their abusers. This reality will not only hurt those victims, but it will also put all of us in danger—your children and mine—because the best friend of an abuser is silence…All of these actions send one of two possible messages to the community: Either Walder was innocent and we don’t believe that he did anything wrong, or even worse, that even if the accusations are true and he did something wrong, it isn’t that important. Each of these messages, and particularly both together, are a chilul Hashem.”</p></blockquote><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p><p class="p3" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">These should have set the baseline response. Unfortunately, much of the brouhaha that followed the suicide just exemplified how far off the mark the other responses were.</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p><p class="p3" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Like Pharaoh from the beginning of Exodus until the drowning of his retinue at the Red Sea, too many high-level responses to the aftermath of the suicide manifested Pharaonic heart hardening, triggered by yet another threat to the credibility of the doctrine of daas torah, even starker when one considers the already significant negative impact caused by the confused responses at the beginning of the COVID pandemic and the tragedy in Meron. </p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p><p class="p3" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">[It the "Pharaonic" label fair? One can cite several precedents. Judge Ruchie Freier recalled how one principal who told her that “we don’t want our girls to think” reminded her of how the Sodomites used to “surgically” make their hotel guests fit into bed; one of the authorities I cited above said that Walder having his name dragged through the mud was akin to Hezekiah dragging the bones of his recently deceased wicked father through the streets of Jerusalem with approval from the Sages. I would go even a step further and label Walder’s works as Balaamic: full of praise for their charges while what he did to them indicates where his mind [and not just that] really was at. While we don’t need to literally drag Walder’s bones through the streets [his massive public funeral and immediate public posthumous accolades indicate it would be a well-nigh impossibility], it might not be the worst idea to send dumpsters into every community that has his books, collect them, take them to the shore of the Dead Sea, and then process them through woodchoppers into the saline lake. <i>Velo yidbak meumah min hacherem</i>. And—like TB Sanhedrin says about Baalam—anything that can be said <i>lignai</i> should be.]</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p><p class="p3" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">In the meantime, faced with trying to make sense of—or cover up—what one frum British observer has called “<a href="https://www.thejc.com/lets-talk/all/the-charedi-jimmy-savile-has-left-us-all-in-shock-4HbsdkBuog0QT39CbWEknU]">the Jewish Jimmy Savile</a>”, the wagons were once again circled at top speed:</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><p class="p3" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><a href="https://vinnews.com/2021/12/28/rabbi-shlomo-aviner-at-present-walders-books-are-permitted-to-be-read/">At Present, Walder’s Books Are Permitted To Be Read</a>: “Every person is presumed innocent until otherwise proven. This is known in secular law as the presumption of innocence. He is not a rasha who needs to prove that he has not sinned. Nothing is yet proven…Up to this point the complaints from women were not investigated in this adversarial manner.”<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span> </p></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><p class="p3" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"> </p></blockquote><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px;">[Note in this case daas torah seems to be suspended in order to allow a “secular” principle to aid the whitewash.]</span><br /><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><p class="p3" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><a href="https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/silence-assured/">Silence assured</a>: “….he continues, it is forbidden to believe the allegations, based on the laws of “Lashon Hara.” He says of alleged victims that perhaps they are making it up or they might believe what they are saying but they could have “fantasized it.” He says in order to believe the allegations, the victims must appear before an unbiased beit din in front of the accused. The beit din must investigate both the claims and the defense and determine what is “true” after a total investigation. Until beit din rules the accusation to be true, it is all labeled <i>choshesh</i> (suspicion).”</p><p class="p4" style="color: #dca10d; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p><p class="p3" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><a href="https://vinnews.com/2021/12/28/rabbi-gershon-edelstein-no-leniency-in-lashon-hara-permits-people-to-spill-blood-and-murder-a-jew/">‘No Leniency In Lashon Hara Permits People To Spill Blood And Murder A Jew’</a>: “…even if according to halacha we need to beware of someone, there is no leniency or even hint of leniency allowing people to spill blood and murder a Jew. It is obvious that this is deemed murdering him and it is obvious that the murderer has no portion in the World to Come. It is clear that the great pressure he was under led him to lose his sanity and kill himself. This is called murder.”</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p><p class="p3" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><a href="http://www.tziporahheller.com/from-the-rebbetzins-desk/the-chaim-walder-parsha">The Chaim Walder Parsha</a>: “When the story broke, I chose to say little. I wasn’t there and neither was the supercilious writer for Haaretz, one of Israel’s left-leaning dailies. I had heard his name before. His career is built on exposés and he spares no effort time or (probably other people’s) money on digging up anything he could about the observant community that he abandoned. Often times people who leave the path of Torah remain scrupulous about some mitzvos. I don’t know him personally, but I know that one mitzvah that he treats lightly is telling the truth. As time went on, it turned out that some of Israel’s most respected authorities, world class dayanim associated with the most respected courts were conducting interview after interview . Their conclusions were hair-raising and undisputed. One thing must not be forgotten. I am not sure what the sentence would have been if he were tried in a court of law, and sentenced, but I am sure that we don’t have a punishment called Death By Shaming.”</p></blockquote><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p><p class="p3" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">And the administration of one prominent US girls school had this to say:</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><p class="p3" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">“In light of the recent horror that has occurred in Eretz Yisroel in regard to a well-known children’s author, I urge you all to exercise extreme restraint when discussing this…In truth, this subject should never have reached the ears of our children in the first place. As a community, we need to be more vigilant about what we share with our children and what we allow them to view, read or hear. We are partially the cause of this unnecessary crisis of how to support our children who are now grappling with too-much-information. Let's be more careful. I therefore ask that you do not include your family in this discussion. If they bring it to you, please seek counsel from a Rav on how to address it. After consulting with Daas Torah, we suggest that where possible, it is best to remain vague…”</p></blockquote><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p><p class="p3" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Then there were “clarifications” that followed some of these proclamations:</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><p class="p3" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><a href="https://vinnews.com/2021/12/31/official-response-to-walder-affair-by-rabbi-edelstein-shlita-these-matters-must-be-dealt-with-confidentially/">Official Response To Walder Affair… ‘These Matters Must Be Dealt With Confidentially’</a>: “An official response to the Chaim Walder affair has been published in the name of Rabbi Gershon Edelstein. VINnews published a response immediately after the suicide but since then we have learned from Rabbi Edelstein’s family that the response (i.e. that adulterers receive the World to Come but public shamers do not) was based on what Rabbi Edelstein told Chaim Walder himself before the suicide. The addition stating that the suicide was murder (because he was driven to it by those criticizing him) was not apparently said by Rabbi Edelstein himself but was said by some of his close disciples.”</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p><p class="p3" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><a href="https://www.facebook.com/hellersite/posts/346313024161604">Betrayal</a>: “I have a confession to make. I wrote my last letter when I was suffering from the “Say it isn’t so” syndrome. … I wasn't fully informed. Until I heard the dayanim who investigated the abuse had found the accusations to be true, I could not allow myself to let the emotions that I now feel to surface but, the reason that I don’t blindly trust anti-religious journalists is not because they don’t wear the right kippahs or that the stories they choose are juicy. Their policy of denigrating the religious community (and not only the chareidim but also the “settlers” and any one else who is not them) is not a deep secret. Don’t simplify a complex issue.”<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></p></blockquote><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p><p class="p3" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">These “apologies” themselves were Pharaonic in that one knew they were more exercises in PR damage control rather than expressions of sincere regret for the damage caused to the victims of Walder’s crimes, the students who looked up to these authorities and who now were openly questioning their credibility if not their moral fitness to lead, and to the overall perception of Torah as a moral lodestone in general. There is a specific halachic term for that last scenaraio, and I don’t have to spell it out, because one of the first three rabbonim I quoted <a href=" https://jewishlink.news/features/48373-on-books-in-a-jewish-home-on-evil-and-on-chilul-hashem">delineates</a> how this particular offense was committed multiple times with aggravating factors:</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><p class="p3" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">“All of these actions send one of two possible messages to the community: Either Walder was innocent and we don’t believe that he did anything wrong, or even worse, that even if the accusations are true and he did something wrong, it isn’t that important. Each of these messages, and particularly both together, are a chilul Hashem.”</p></blockquote><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p><p class="p3" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Ironically, before the suicide, the heart hardening was relatively muted: even with the r<a href="https://twitter.com/Feldheim/status/1461417361911734273?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1461417361911734273%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.jpost.com%2Fisrael-news%2Fharedi-author-chaim-walder-dropped-from-publisher-amid-rape-allegations-685462">eferences to daas torah and the hope that the allegations weren’t true</a>, the fact that major religious retail chains were convinced enough of the credibility of the charges to pull his books from circulation was a <a href="https://twitter.com/MordyGetz/status/1460734926576312323?s=20">big step</a>, and was acknowledged was such, irrespective of whether it was in reaction to market forces or whether it was driven by actual moral concerns. <i>Mitoch shelo lishma bah lishma</i>. But that all went to hell after the suicide, and the Pharaonic reflexes kicked in with full force. Almost as if <i>vayaar ki haysa harvacha</i>—they saw the opportunity created by Walder’s self-martyrdom and couldn’t resist taking it.</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p><p class="p3" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">One could hope and pray that, like in Beshalach, this Pharaonic heart hardening is the last one. But that’s unlikely: <a href="https://jewishcoffeehouse.com/the-crisis-of-orthodox-leadership-reaches-a-boiling-point-with-rabbi-yosef-blau-93/">one principal in the daas torah community</a> told the mother of a victim that she was allowed halachically to go to the police, but he would still kick all her children out of his yeshiva if they did. Clearly a lot of the daas torah community already knows that there’s no real halachic basis for their insistence to not <i>moser</i> predators to the police; like baseball before Jackie Robinson broke the color line, where baseball “tradition” maintaining its culture even with no real written policy keeping it in place--because the they knew one wasn’t needed--an ostensible cultural "tradition" trumped an actual halacha.</p><p class="p3" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p><p class="p3" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Then there were those who almost got it right. Maybe even 99.44% right. </p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><p class="p3" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><a href="https://cross-currents.com/2021/12/29/chaim-walder/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=chaim-walder">Chaim Walder</a>: “Taken at face value, Rav Gershon offered a simple equation. Walder was guilty of some sexual indiscretions. Others were guilty of <i>retzichah. Retzichah</i> is worse than adultery. Therefore those who unnecessarily contributed to his death are worse than Walder.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>That, however, is simply wrong. <b>Molestation of children and teens is also murder.</b> Don’t we all know that by now? …it might very well be that <b>those whom Rav Gershon is critical of killed one person – but Walder may have killed many, many more.</b> … The actual numbers are irrelevant. So is Walder’s innocence or guilt. If the presumption is allowed to stand that he may only have violated an <i>aveirah</i> of <i>gilui arayos</i>, we have a much greater problem on our hands. If this is what we will share with our families, we can be certain that there will be many more victims in the years to come.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Some of them will kill themselves, <i>r”l</i>. Whom will we fault then? If Rav Gershon doesn’t realize all of this, responsible people close to him will certainly share the blame if they don’t convey to him what the fine people at Amudim, the parents who have lost their children, and the properly trained therapists who deal with their trauma all know.”</p></blockquote><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p><p class="p3" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Still—“Rav Gershon Edelstein’s shlit”a’s words are a powerful reproach about how we use speech”: the notion that one could parse that particular statement as just an imprecation against the evils of social media generally without it portending another wagon circling in order to protect the ultimate reputation of the criminal and the community he represented is—bewildering, to be charitable. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Especially since the author recognizes the effects of the offenses much more than those he considers to be leaders of his community, as well as recognizing that said leaders seem to have that blind spot when it comes to this issue.</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p><p class="p3" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">(Referencing the David/Batsheva narrative is no accident: it's an oft-used tactic of defenders of miscreants from daas torah (and other) communities to use the ostenible sexual indiscretion as the <a href=" https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium.HIGHLIGHT-ultra-orthdox-sex-offenders-rarely-feel-guilty-over-abuses-therapists-say-1.9957171">worst offense in need of forgiveness,</a> as opposed to the horrifying abuse that they still seem to be unable—or even unwilling—to address from within halachic sources. Also, as this specific reference to adultery is spoken in the Talmud by King David, it isn’t unusual to hear “well, King David made a mistake and he did teshuva”, simultaneously whitewashing the crime in question AND elevating the miscreant to the level of a King David. This was heard a lot when the long criminal history of <a href="https://www.bjpa.org/content/upload/bjpa/stol/Stolen%20Innocence%20-%20Gary%20Rosenblatt%20-%20Jewish%20Week%20-%20Sexual%20Abuse.pdf">Baruch Lanner</a> was revealed in 2000.)</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p><p class="p3" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">As one of the other authorities above <a href="https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/our-kids-need-protecting-not-our-community/">noted</a>—one who has been at the forefront of trying to get the more fervent Orthodox communities to face up to and deal with the abusers in their midst—this was not a time to be theologically didactic: “…those who are toiling to promote the public relations of our community <i>without expending at least an equal amount of their energy improving child safety</i> are making our public image worse[,] not better, for they are just hammering home the points our detractors are making.” <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>The focus on the didactic and not the crime is wholly inappropriate, particularly in a case like this.</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p><p class="p3" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Another rabbinic analysis also left no wiggle room for Walder or his defenders and gave pointers on how to explain why his books were being removed—but still, without even mentioning daas torah or ostensibly even meaning to buttress the concept, he still seemed to give it underserving if unwitting props.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>While he did instruct “Tell your children that if they are Chas V’Shalom touched, they did nothing wrong, and they should never feel ashamed to tell you”—he left open exactly to whom the predator should be reported, possibly because he’s aware of the aforementioned strong cultural discomfort (extreme understatement) with getting secular law enforcement involved.</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p><p class="p3" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">More specifically, the letter question here felt compelled to repeat the notion that Yichud has a prominent role in keeping children safe (“Make sure laws of Yichud are always followed very stringently”), which is—well, let’s just say exhorting the populace at large to be more shomer yichud as if that would be the panacea for some of the worst possible behaviors that could be committed by a public Torah personality is a nonsequitur at best, and a distortion at worst. </p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p><p class="p3" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Yichud didn’t save children from Walder. Yichud didn’t save Kolko’s talmidim. Yichud didn’t save Malka Leifer’s students. <b><i>BECAUSE YICHUD DIDN’T APPLY IN THOSE CASES. </i></b>Making a nonsequiturian, Pavlovian connection between Yichud on one hand and prevention of predation on the other ultimately does a tremendous disservice to that halacha in particular, and halacha in general.</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p><p class="p3" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Furthermore, the implications behind the lectures on being “<a href="https://vinnews.com/2022/01/06/rav-moshe-meiselman-walder-is-a-rasha-merusha-see-the-video/">more tznius</a>” and “<a href="https://www.torahanytime.com/#/lectures?a=173515">more careful about yichud</a>” is almost always by default directed at women; one can say with certainty that that is the perception, and if it isn't the reality, one gets the idea that those doing the exhorting wish it were. If these lectures were directed at the men who were the potential “sinners”—let alone the potential predators—with equal emphasis and vigor, we might see decreased criminality, and maybe even better (more "halachic”!!!, even) behavior in general. [Maybe Malka Leifer was so makpid on yichud that she only assaulted girls.] Instead of telling the victims to cover up and seclude themselves, potential miscreants need to be urged be <i>yeshev badad veyidom—</i>sit alone in silence—before they end up doing that for real in jail.</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p><p class="p3" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">(If you want to know more about the mindset that leads to the touting of shmiras yichud as a foolproof self-defense tactic, read “<a href="https://notajungle.com/2017/07/why-they-lie-to-you-in-bt-yeshiva/">Why They Lie To You In BT Yeshiva</a>”. The author actually thinks such “lies” are necessary—and good. Although, to be fair, the notion isn’t just limited to the daas torah community: a prominent Orthodox feminist who is legitimately critical of many Orthodox inconsistencies—from both the daas torah and more modern communities—<a href="https://forward.com/opinion/385424/no-modesty-wont-protect-you-from-the-harvey-weinsteins-but-this-might/">made the same miscalculation</a>.)</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p><p class="p3" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">In these cases, because of “yichud”, we have “vayichad”—<a href="https://www.sefaria.org/Exodus.18.9?lang=bi&with=Rashi&lang2=en">Rashi</a> notes that the reaction lasts “ten generations”. The reflex to defend daas torah prerogatives is so ingrained that the real message will always be muddled.</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p><p class="p3" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">But one should remember the <a href="https://www.sefaria.org/Shabbat.119b?lang=bi">Talmudic</a> maxim: “the world exists on the breath of schoolchildren”. </p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p><p class="p3" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">There is no parallel statement “the world exists on daas torah”. </p>The Odd Coghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04631555699756710917noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6705549154171325165.post-72389320720123209502021-08-02T15:07:00.001-07:002021-08-02T15:07:07.152-07:00 Ben, Jerry, and Julia: The Last Sadductions<p>(crosspost from <a href="https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/ben-jerry-and-julia-the-last-sadductions/">Times of Israel</a>)</p><p><span style="font-family: inherit;">Maimonides once commented that the Sadducees’ ostensible professed commitment to the apparent literal directives of the Written Torah to the exclusion of any oral tradition was essentially a complete ruse: they didn’t actually believe in either Torah; it was just a convenient vehicle to express their opposition to any tradition.</span></p><p class="p1" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Recent events have highlighted how certain Jews prominent in pop culture have adopted a version of this Sadducean option: professing a “commitment” to Judaism while publicly and shamelessly working to undermine authentic Jewish prerogatives.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>The difference this time is that they are guilty of especially bad timing along with public perfidy, and the Jewish community at large has justifiably decided to make examples out of them as a warning to raise the price of all Jewish antisemitism.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="s1" style="text-decoration-line: underline;"><a href="https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/21/business/ben-and-jerrys-palestinian-territories-israel/index.html">Bennett Cohen and Jerry Greenfield</a></span> have long incorporated a <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/ben-and-jerry-say-they-support-israel-reject-its-illegal-occupation/"><span class="s1">strain of progressive activism</span></a> into their iconic ice cream product; when their company was bought out by Unilever.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>As with most contemporary progressivism, there has been a hostility to Zionism that was somewhat muted until recently likely due to corporate considerations, but became inevitably expressed following the recent conflagration with Hamas when their board decided to stop selling their product in the “occupied territories”.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p2" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Disingenuous claims that this move was not technically “BDS” was belied at the very least by the company’s long history of hard left activism, including major support for the antiwar, terrorist-sympathizing collective ANSWER as far back as 2003; the fact that the <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/i-am-not-anti-semitic-says-ben-jerrys-board-chair-amid-boycott-controversy"><span class="s1">current chairman of the board</span></a> has written glowingly about Hamas and Hezbollah; and that the company would have pulled out of Israel entirely but was <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/ben-jerrys-board-in-dispute-with-owners-unilever-over-complete-israel-pullout/"><span class="s1">prevented from doing so</span></a> by their corporate overlords at Unilever. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="Apple-converted-space"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Following an international backlash of unexpected intensity that galvanized most segments of the Jewish community <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/07/26/power-up-progressive-pro-israel-groups-come-out-support-ben-jerry/"><span class="s1">save for the usual pockets</span></a> of doctrinaire “Jewish” progressives, Messrs. Cohen and Greenfield<a href="http://nytimes.com/2021/07/28/opinion/ben-and-jerry-israel.html"><span class="s1"> took to the pages of the New York Times</span></a> to proclaim their fealty to Israel whilst decrying the occupation, giving lip service to their record of activism while eliding the fact that they’ve partnered with <a href="https://www.jewishpress.com/indepth/opinions/i-scream-you-scream-we-all-scream-at-this-ice-cream/2003/05/02/?fbclid=IwAR2f2MlSMvxtcUygD1Lt0zj-gZfwp-vrptfW62Pu7OJAhrYG15RlT0cuupw"><span class="s1">antisemitic bigots</span></a> both <a href="https://freebeacon.com/national-security/meet-ben-jerrys-board-chair-anti-israel-activist-has-published-defenses-of-hezbollah-hamas/"><span class="s1">inside</span></a> and <a href="https://www.pinterest.com/pin/353462270751289024/"><span class="s1">outside</span></a> their company. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="Apple-converted-space"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="p3" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s2"><span style="font-family: inherit;">This time, <a href="https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/ben-and-jerrys-board-wanted-to-boycott-all-of-israel-674405"><span class="s1">fewer people are buying their explanations</span></a>, just as <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/us-kosher-supermarkets-to-stop-stocking-ben-jerrys-in-protest/"><span class="s1">fewer people are going to buying and stocking their ice cream</span></a>.</span></span></p><p class="p2" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">In a similar vein, the designer Julia Haart—formerly known as <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210707203147/https://www.torahmediaatlanta.com/women/mrs-talia-hendler-2/bena-womens-division/"><span class="s1">Rebbetzin Talia Hendler, a popular Orthodox Jewish educator</span></a>—recently came to pop culture prominence with her Netflix reality show “My Unorthodox Life”, essentially inexorably tying her branding efforts with her implacable opposition to what she perceives to be the “fundamentalist” form of Judaism. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>In other words, her success and striving are all about her leaving Orthodoxy.</span></p><p class="p1" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Like Ben and Jerry, who thought that their timing was propitious owing to progressive agitation following the most recent Hamas aggression only to find that the Jewish community finally had enough, “Rebbetzin” Haart incurred the wrath of a large segment of<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Orthodox community for a multitude of offenses, also in part due to the fact that she seemed to be engaging in the <a href="https://orjewishlife.com/my-unorthodox-life-should-anger-every-proud-jew/"><span class="s1">crudest sort of ethnic stereotyping</span></a> at a time when the targets off her ire have faced heightened mortal threats as their appearance makes them very easy targets; in fact, this possibility was acknowledged by a <a href="https://www.glamour.com/story/my-unorthodox-life-is-compelling-but-could-make-life-harder-for-some-jews"><span class="s1">fashion writer from Glamour magazine</span></a> with no otherwise obvious connection to Orthodox Judaism.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">One could make a list of Haart’s offenses that would be long and still not exhaustive; in fact, while certainly the claims of her very public violations of Jewish law which she celebrates are certainly accurate from that point of view; they’re also somewhat tautological: it certainly wouldn’t be something she or her supporters care about.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>And while those countering with #<a href="https://www.aish.com/jw/s/Its-MyOrthodoxLife-and-Im-Standing-Up-for-It.html"><span class="s1">myorthodoxlife</span></a> hashtags also provide at least a <a href="https://jewishjournal.com/commentary/columnist/338798/jewish-women-showing-off-myorthodoxlife-in-response-to-netflixs-my-unorthodox-life/"><span class="s1">decent counterargument</span></a> to Haart’s <i>freikeit</i>, they also only go so far: one can detect a slight element of defensiveness and/or an attempt to turn the fallout from the show into a “kiruv” moment.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Again, those are fine on their terms, but they do not deal with the main issue with a show like this, and why attempt should be made to make Netflix and the producers feel enough pain so that they reconsider trying to mount a similar production again.</span></p><p class="p1" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The main thrust of attacking the show should be narrowed to three specific issues: false advertising regarding her background; group defamation using the distortion of insider knowledge from her time the community; and her concomitant<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>abandonment of almost any social boundaries to he point that she nearly forfeits her fitness as a parent.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">It has been noticed Haart is s<a href="https://www.clevelandjewishnews.com/jta/enough-with-the-ex-orthodox-drama-the-path-back-to-judaism-isn-t-always-traumatic/article_62e0a0ec-cf5f-520f-b4c5-c932f128024e.htm"><span class="s1">eriously dissembling about her own former background</span></a> and how that relates to how Orthodoxy really works, no matter how traumatic her experiences may have been; her own former students have remarked how “<a href="https://twitter.com/RachelSteinmetz/status/141761800257766195"><span class="s1">with it</span></a>” she was for a Orthodox teacher, and even a few of her old lectures that still remain up on the web indicate her even-then easy familiarity with pop culture.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>So, in this case, irrespective of what issues there might be with the treatment of women in Orthodoxy—and they certainly do exist—not only is Haart a poor messenger because of credibility issues, but she will make it more difficult for those working for change within the system who don’t consider leaving an option.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">But it is not only her revisionist personal history that impact said credibility.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Even the title of the show gives the game away: Haart, a former educator, generalizes her pedagogical skills in a campaign of anti-kiruv; or, to steal back a term she uses, she engages in ardent counterfundamentalism.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>She has made her media brand now about maligning anything that has to do with Orthodox Judaism as she has defined it, using enough of the insider knowledge to distort certain concepts/precepts beyond recognition and presenting them as the linchpins of all Orthodox life.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Essentially, she prosletyzes hard for <i>freikeit</i> as much as she might have done once upon a time for <i>frumkeit: </i>either they have to be right or she has to be, and to prove her own rectitude, she has to drag everyone else along.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Meanwhile, <a href="https://www.kveller.com/my-own-unorthodox-life-is-nothing-like-the-netflix-series/"><span class="s1">even other ex-Orthodox</span></a> have noticed how her approach is more than misleading.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Especially since it becomes apparent in many scenes during the show that Haart’s parenting and mentoring style becomes more cringeworthy than her fashion.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>It’s not only the recent 16 year old runaway from Orthodoxy who seek her out for advice and basically ends up getting something akin to training for sex work; it’s that Haart ends up intruding on her children’s social AND sex lives in a way that should incur interest from social workers and family service agencies.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Haart’s commitment to “freedom” at all costs places her somewhere between Alex Portnoy’s mother and Simone de Beauvoir, who essentially became Sartre’s procurer in their later years.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The reaction to these miscreants should be fierce and unyielding.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>The opprobrium leveled at them should be withering to the point that ad hominem attacks are legitimate, as they have tied their personal brands with attacks on Jews and Judaism while maintaining that they are engaged in legitimate Jewish expressions. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>One might claim that such a response is disproportionate to the actual offenses committed; while such an argument might be made on the direct merits, the timing of these events in the current zeitgeist of heightened antisemitism and media driven Judeomisia, those who cross over while pretending to communitarianism at such a time need to be made to pay an unpayable price.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p2" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">It is often asked why the pig<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>comes in for such ignominy ignominy in classic Jewish literature; the most oft-given answer is given that the pig sticks out his cloven hooves in an attempt to appear kosher. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>This porcine paradigm provides a useful template for indelibly branding them as the modern Sadducees they are.</span></p>The Odd Coghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04631555699756710917noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6705549154171325165.post-33380030701829974482021-07-16T09:39:00.010-07:002021-07-16T09:45:06.860-07:00 Bar Kamtza deserved it<p><span style="color: #444444; font-family: georgia;">The guy who threw Bar Kamtza out of his party and ostensibly set off the chain of events that led to the destruction of the Second Temple and our current ongoing galus gets a bad rap.</span></p><p class="p3" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: georgia;">In fact, the educational taking point most often promulgated—that this incident of public shaming was the paradigm of the sinat chinam [baseless hatred] that was the primary sin for which the Churban was the punishment—is, to my mind, overemphasized, particularly light of the subsequent events in the Churban narrative in TB Gittin 55-58.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p2" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></p><p class="p3" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: georgia;">For one thing, Bar Kamtza clearly was a Bad Jew (never mind not a nice guy).<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>One could surmise that he knew he was going where he was not wanted, and still felt entitled to be there, based on the fact that he was likely rich (hence his offer to pay for everyone at the party—why couldn’t he just leave quietly?<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>In fact, maybe one should praise the host for sticking to his principles and not taking Bar Kamtza’s bribe); furthermore, he was apparently connected (how else would he have so quickly obtained an audience with a Roman procurator and convinced him that the Jews were rebelling?), and—like some of today’s progressive asajews—he knew enough minimal Jewish law and ethics to use against his own people.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></p><p class="p3" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: georgia;">One possible other Biblical parallel gives a hint to Bar Kamtza’s character: while the Talmud hints that G-d destroyed his Temple on account of Bar Kamtza’s humiliation, elsewhere the Talmud notes that Bilaam’s talking donkey was slain by the angel after she had repeatedly humiliated Bilaam in front of Balak’s advisers.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>One can draw a parallel between Bilaam and Bar Kamtza especially since the destruction wrought by Bar Kamtza would likely have made Bilaam proud (and might further explain why Bilaam’s spirit, enduring the eternal torment of boiling in a pot of semen, makes a cameo appearance in TB Gittin’s Churban narrative).</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></p><p class="p3" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: georgia;">In fact—as further evidence of of the tenuousness of the “embarrassed!!!” talking point—the Talmud rather cryptically states “Jerusalem was destroyed on account of Kamtza and Bar Kamtza”, but later in the same narrative it states rather unequivocally “Rabbi Yoḥanan says: the excessive humility of Rabbi Zekharya ben Avkolas destroyed our Temple, burned our Sanctuary, and exiled us from our land.”<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Does anyone in chinuch teach that humility was the cause of the Churban? <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Why isn’t there as much focus on the humility (vs humiliation) as having destroyed the Temple as the embarrassment resulting from a personal grudge? <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p2" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></p><p class="p3" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: georgia;">There’s another interesting hint in the narrative: “<span class="s1">Bar Kamtza</span> said to himself: Since the Sages were sitting there and did not protest the actions of the host, although they saw how he humiliated me, learn from it that they were content with what he did..”<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Some commentators opine that the excessively humble Rabbi Zekharya ben Avkolas was one of said Sages: if in theory the excessive humility was justified [a minority defend him, even saying that Rabbi Yochanan’s ostensible condemnation was actually praise], why isn’t there an equal defense of the humiliation of <span class="s1">Bar Kamtza</span>?</span></p>The Odd Coghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04631555699756710917noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6705549154171325165.post-91910627077091326522021-06-24T07:00:00.004-07:002021-07-16T09:44:10.040-07:00Korach and Bilaam: Critical Theorists, Intersectional Progressives…and One-Percenters<p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></p><p class="p3" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: georgia;">Scratch a (most likely) rich intersectional progressive who touts critical theory and is a purported MOT, and you’ve found a spiritual heir to both Korach and Bilaam.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></p><p class="p3" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: georgia;">Critical theorist and progressive attacks on Jews and Judaism go all the way back to the time of Moshe Rabbeinu.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>In Korach, the parsha’s namesake launches his attack from within; in this week’s parsha, Balak, Bilaam attacks from without.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></p><p class="p3" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: georgia;">It has been <a href="http://yeush.blogspot.com/2009/06/shlachkorachlonely-at-top.htm">posited in these pages</a> that Korach was the first Stalinist: he appealed to the rest of Bnei Yisrael by pretending to be a “democrat” [“rav lachem”] and telling the other 250 top-line conspirators that they would share power; he also knew that if Moshe was right about the service with the machtos [pans] would kill anyone unworthy of performing it, and he was right about living to claim his share of power—based upon his near-prophetic visions—he would live and everyone else would die. The fact that he was willing to let everyone else die so that he could claim his prize—and that he thought that this would automatically be Divinely sanctioned—spoke volumes about his worthiness as any leader, let alone spiritual.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></p><p class="p3" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: georgia;">In addition to his progressive pretensions, Korach may also have been the first “critical theorist”: he attacks the credibility and authority of Mosaic law first through his cynical false analogy between the techelet thread and the all-blue tallis, and then by attacking the system of tithing as unfair taxation.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>In other words, by the time he has managed to questions the very foundations of the Mosaic order, he has rallied a huge portion of B’nei Yisrael to his side—so much that even <i>after</i> the earth opens up and swallows him, so many <i>still</i> accuse Moses of having assassinated Korach that G-d inflicts a deadly plague upon the people.<br /><br />(This might be vaguely reminiscent of both the “confessions” of old guard Bolshevik victims of the Stalinist purges of the 1930’s, and to a lesser extent, the increasing amount of abject public “apologies” and commitments to “do better” among celebrities and others who are otherwise ostensibly “woke”.)</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></p><p class="p3" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: georgia;">It is in this vein that the s<a href=" https://yourbayit.org/the-false-piety-of-all-lives-matter/">ame ostensible spiritual leader</a> who writes “Korach is a classic demagogue…[h]e is not seeking more power for the people, just more for himself” can also force a Korachist moral/theological equivalence between the “obligation of learning about systemic racism and systems of oppression” and the obligation to tell the story of the Exodus on Passover—insisting that the one who refuses that obligation is akin to the “wicked child” at the Seder.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Like Korach, this spiritual leader starts out with a proclamation of “<i>kulam kedoshim</i>”—everyone is holy—while in effect, if not intent, the implication that Jewish theology must give way to a “higher consciousness” in the event of a clash between the two always lurks beneath the surface.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>(Never mind that the movements so highly touted by this aforementioned spiritual leader are anti-Judaism, anti-holiness and antisemitic at their core, even more overtly so as of late.)</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></p><p class="p3" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: georgia;">Korach isn’t hiding behind an “all lives matter” theology—<i>adderabba</i>: he insists that those in power must have ipso facto arranged to systemically arrogated themselves an outsized portion due to “supremacist” motions, and that certain subgroups are ipso facto being treated unfairly and therefore—by dint of their having been “oppressed”—automatically deserve a share of resources and power not necessarily proportionate to what has been earned.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p2" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></p><p class="p3" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: georgia;">Like Korach, Bilaam also has prophetic abilities—however marginal—that let him lead himself to believe that his progressive and critical theorist approaches to life ostensibly had Divine sanction.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>The very name “Bilaam” has been seen as a mashup of “b’lo ‘am”, an early version of “open borders”, which especially in Bilaam’s case also meant “no boundaries”, both in his private life—the less said about his “nightly consort”, the better—and public, where he not only gives wanton lasciviousness a public sanction it hasn’t had in centuries to that point, but he also weaponizes it based on the spiritual tools he does possess. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Korach and Bilaam used spirituality—an ostensibly Jewish, if distorted, kind—to antagonize Jews, as evidenced by current groups like JVP and INN.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span> Bilaam took it a step further by using his ”open borders” philosophy to unite disparate factions against all Jews.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></p><p class="p3" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: georgia;">The aforementioned spiritual leader also mentions that “unless a lie begins with a little bit of truth, it will not be believed (Rashi, Num. 13:27)”. Both Korach and Bilaam—despite the fact they suffer eternal punishment as per the Talmud—do speak and possess some level of spiritual truths: there is a train of thought—predominantly Chassidic—that Korach will serve as Kohen Gadol in the Messianic era, and Bilaam’s (however forced) visions and proclamations were former codified in the Torah and are part of the daily liturgy. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>However, both are indicative of how each were forced to repudiate their ostensibly progressive tenets: Bilaam when he couldn’t curse the Jews no matter how hard he tried and ended up blessing them, and Korach when forced to say “Moses and his Torah are true, but they [Korah's company] are liars [e]very thirty days [while] turn[ed] back like meat in a pot”.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></p><p class="p3" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: georgia;">In fact, the true common thread between Korach, Bilaam and critical theory might be envy on steroids: Korach’s entire trigger was based on the fact that Moses and Aaron’s lineage was ostensibly else prestigious than his, and because of that he was willing to go as far as upending the entire Mosaic system;<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Bilaam, during one of his visions, states “Let me die the death of the righteous, and let mine end be like his” (Num. 23:10), all while machinating just how to get rid of as many of them as he possibly could.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p2" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></p><p class="p3" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: georgia;">Korach and Bilaam's intersectional penchants also did incalculable damage to women and families: Korach took a disparate coalition of ostensibly aggrieved groups with nothing in common other than that they wanted to dislodge Moshe, to the point that they made Moshe a target of South warnings: break up your own family to prove a point. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Bilaam was the outgrowth of the Rashi/Medrash that pointed out that Moav and Midian had hated each other for centuries but “made peace” to fight the Jews, and then Bilaam had both of them sell out their women in a program of nationalized weaponized prostitution to defeat Israel.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></p><p class="p3" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: georgia;">Another commonality: Korach and Bilaam—men of the people—were one-percenters.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></p><p class="p3" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: georgia;">Korach was incredibly rich: the midrash details how much he owned and how much effort it took for him to get his riches out of Egypt. Also he may have been as assimilated as Dasan and Aviram: he was reputed to have been a chief financier of Pharaoh, which was where he got a lot of his money.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Meaning he took advantage of his Levite status—they weren’t enslaved—in ways that Moshe and Aharon didn’t [Moshe went to be “be among his brethren”] and only now suddenly did he ”get religion”, which is why it might not have been so difficult for him to deny Mosaic law.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></p><p class="p3" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: georgia;">Bilaam’s riches aren’t as directly spelled out in the literature, but his status as <i>the</i> premier “curser” of his era indicated that he was very much in demand at the highest levels of power for his talent, which means that he likely could command astronomical fees for his services. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>This might be further indicated by his negotiating tactics at the beginning of the parsha which are couched in religious terms [“if Balak will give me a full house of silver and gold”]. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>While “b’lo am” Bilaam held himself out as a “no borders” guy, all it meant in his case was that he was as ideologically promiscuous as he was personally.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>If one needed to find a possible modern day parallel to Bilaam it might be Julian Assange, a red diaper baby now in command of a multimillion dollar operation with pretensions to “openness” but who has proven to be as ideologically promiscuous as he is personally (and the “Ass” in “Assange” might indicate another sort of kinship with Bilaam.)</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></p><p class="p3" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: georgia;">In fact, where you might have met a cross-section of Korachist and BIlaamist types were in the groups that defended Zimri and attacked Pinchas after Pinchas killed Zimri, when they hailed Zimri as the “Prince in Israel” who was murdered by someone whose grandfather “fattened calves for idolatry”.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>You can picture the spiritual descendants of these rabble rousers saying Kaddish for Hamas and running around with signs saying “Zimrey Epstein didn’t kill himself”, to possibly better their chances of assignations with foreign women [as per TB Sanhedrin: “he wants what we want”.] <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p2" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></p><p class="p3" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: georgia;">Nothing says critical theorist more than using literally G-d given gifts to bring His house down in service of a personal agenda. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p2" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></p><p class="p3" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: georgia;">Nothing says intersectionality more than an ersatz universalism united only in its doctrinaire Judeomisia (as a treatment of the recent resurgence of antisemitism in the US put it, “they are ecumenical, these barbarians”).</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></p><p class="p3" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: georgia;">And nothing says progressive more than one-percenters masquerading as men of the people.</span></p>The Odd Coghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04631555699756710917noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6705549154171325165.post-89534990493205441162020-08-21T14:19:00.004-07:002021-07-16T09:44:33.603-07:00 Shoftim: More Police<p><span style="color: #444444; font-family: georgia;"><span face="">Parshas Shoftim is bookended by the command at the beginning fo the parsha to appoint judges to decide the law and police to enforce it, and at the end by the mitzvah of </span><i>egla arufa, </i><span face="">the ceremony involving breaking the neck of an unyoked cow when a murder victim is discovered between municipalities and the guilty party has not yet been identified.</span></span></p><p class="p3" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: georgia;">An indispensable element of the ritual is that the elders of the town measured to have been closest to the corpse are to wash their hands and declare “our hands did not spill this blood and our eyes did not see” [Dev. 21:7].</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></p><p class="p3" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: georgia;">Essentially there are two angles to the import of this declaration, answering the possible question of why there is even a premise regarding the ostensible culpability of the leadership of the town: <a href="http://text.rcarabbis.org/parashat-shoftim-egla-arufa-forcing-an-entire-city-to-engage-in-introspection-by-yaakov-bieler/">as delineated in M. Sotah 9:6</a>: “Does it ever occur to us that the elders of the local court are murderers? … rather (they are declaring) that we were never approached by this individual and we never deliberately sent him away without food; we never saw him setting out on a journey and are not to be blamed for allowing him to travel without a protective entourage”.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>This would seem to indicate that there was a chain of failures in the social order that led to this killing; in fact, <a href="https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/6705549154171325165/8953499049320544116#">one theory</a> is that<b><i> </i></b>the person killed was a starving individual engaged in mugging a traveler who killed his attacker in self-defense.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></p><p class="p3" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: georgia;">Much is made of this social welfare talking point in chinuch and other circles, especially since it provides an <a href="https://www.aish.com/tp/i/gl/272535651.html">invariable opportunity to instruct </a>about how those “on a higher spiritual level should be acutely aware that their actions do not take place in a vacuum…The Darchei Mussar [says] that had the Elders been flawed in a way that faintly resembles murder, then there would have been a ripple effect to the other people in the city. This is because the behavior of the greatest people in a community filters down to everyone else. Had the elders had a minor flaw in their relating to the value of life then everyone else would also weaken in their respect for the value of life. This could affect those on the lowest level to the extent that it could even be possible that one of them stoop to the level of actually murdering a person.”</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></p><p class="p3" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: georgia;">However, the emphasis on that mussar angle might possibly detract from the most basic lesson, one sorely in need of forceful repetition in a day and age where there are some who think ending policing is a good idea—nay, a righteous mandate.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></p><p class="p3" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: georgia;"><a href=" https://www.sefaria.org/Deuteronomy.21.7?lang=bi&with=Sforno&lang2=en">Sforno</a> sets it out: “we have not left a stone unturned in (making public) locating the murderer; we are certain that the murderer did not commit this act where he could be seen. Had he been seen, he would have been challenged and prevented from committing the deed. At the very least, such witnesses would have come forward.”<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>This implies that there is at least a semblance of a robust system of law enforcement, or at least that there is a desire to maintain same and to expend the effort to make it work.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></p><p class="p3" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: georgia;">That brings us back to the beginning of the parsha, where<a href="https://www.sefaria.org/Deuteronomy.16.18?lang=bi&with=Ibn%20Ezra&lang2=en"> Ibn Ezra explains</a> how far this system should extend: “Although you go three times a year to see the Kohanim who serve in the Sanctuary, there to ask them questions about our statutes and laws, you still do not fulfill your duty unless you have judges in each of your city gates…The judge dispenses justice, whereas the officer enforces it.”</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></p><p class="p3" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: georgia;">One could also posit that <i>egla arufa</i> is a Divine recognition that any system of law enforcement—even a/the Divienly mandated one—is run by humans, and as a result will inevitably incur human failures, sometimes—if not often—with deadly results.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Yet this never is to lead one to believe that the cure is either doing away with the system entirely.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>One Mishnah often cited by <a href="https://pittsburgh.cbslocal.com/2019/08/19/congregations-dont-want-robert-bowers-death-penalty/">progressives</a> is <a href="https://www.sefaria.org/Mishnah_Makkot.1.10?lang=bi&with=all&lang2=en">Makkos 1:10,</a> where one finds the argument about a Sanhedrin that ostensibly executes even once too often: “A sanhedrin that executes once in seven years, is called murderous. Rabbi Eliezer b. Azariah Says: once in seventy years. Rabbi Tarfon and Rabbi Akiva say: “Had we been members of a sanhedrin, no person would ever be put to death.”<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Progressive types never seem to quote the final clause of that same Mishnah: “Rabban Shimon ben Gamaliel remarked: “They would also multiply murderers…”</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></p><p class="p3" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://www.sefaria.org/Pirkei_Avot.3.2?lang=bi&with=Derech%20Chaim&lang2=en">Avot 3:2 tells us</a>: “pray for the welfare of the government, for were it not for the fear it inspires, every man would swallow his neighbor alive.”<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>It might seem incongruous that the Mishnah uses the term “shlomah” for welfare and then notes that the government in question needs to inspire “morah”, or fear.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>And yet this is what we are precisely praying for: a stable system of law enforcement that inspires at least fear of the consequences of attempting to upend the social order.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>It’s no accident that <a href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/316571/black-americans-police-retain-local-presence.aspx">demographics</a> who ostensibly have reason to fear overpolicing and inequitable policing still strongly desire that local police presence be maintained or even increased--by an overwhelming majority.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></p><p class="p3" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: georgia;"><a href=" https://www.sefaria.org/Berakhot.28b.10?lang=bi&with=all&lang2=en">TB Brachot 28b</a> relates that when Rabbi Yoḥanan ben Zakkai was on his deathbed, his students asked him to bless them: “He said: May it be His will that the fear of Heaven shall be upon you like the fear of flesh and blood. His students were puzzled and said: To that point and not beyond? Shouldn’t one fear God more? He said to them: Would that a person achieve that level of fear…Know that when one commits a transgression, he says to himself: I hope that no man will see me.” <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p2" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></p><p class="p3" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: georgia;">We need to pray for that fear. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p2" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></p><p class="p3" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: georgia;">We need more police.</span></p>The Odd Coghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04631555699756710917noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6705549154171325165.post-48709656916776937732020-07-29T11:17:00.002-07:002020-07-29T11:21:11.104-07:00Tisha Ba'v: Kamtza/Bar Kamtza--Punk'd?<div class="_2cuy _3dgx" data-block="true" data-editor="6053t" data-offset-key="8hah4-0-0" style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; white-space: pre-wrap;">
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i>"A certain man had a friend named Kamtza and an enemy named Bar Kamtza. He made a banquet and asked his servant to invite Kamtza. The servant mistakenly invited Bar Kamtza" </i>[TB Gittin 55b]</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">So begins the narrative about the Second Churban and the endless chinch talking points about sinas chinam and public shaming.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">There comes a point where you wonder whether the the host's messenger didn't really make a mistake, but rather was punking both the host and Bar Kamtza, although to what end would be hard to fathom.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Either way, one has to believe that Bar Kamtza was just looking for a pretext, and it was ostensibly handed to him: ultimately, his playing the victim leads to the belief that he gets off way too light both in his lifetime and in the narrative.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">While the Gemara at the end of that part of the Churban narrative [57a] indicates that <i>the</i> proximate cause of the second Churban was the public shaming of Bar Kamtza, his obvious overreaction indicates several things about him:</span><br />
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<li class="li1" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><span class="s1" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;"></span>he was as much a hater as the unnamed host;</span></li>
<li class="li1" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><span class="s1" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;"></span>he was an entitled whiner who had no compunction about going places where he wasn't welcome--probably because of his (subsequently revealed) position against both his own people and their leadership;</span></li>
<li class="li1" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><span class="s1" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;"></span>as he offered to pay for the whole mesiba in question, he clearly had ample means AND connections...you don't just gain an audience with the Emperor because someone tossed you out of a party, unless you have some kind of political cred;</span></li>
<li class="li1" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><span class="s1" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;"></span>while the Gemara indicates that HKBH Himself stood up for as it were for Bar Kamtza's shame, one should remember from Num. 22:33 that He spared Bilaam's shame as well by slaying the talking donkey.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>A comparison between Bar Kamtza and Bilaam is not out of order, especially since--as I see it--way too much chinuch capital is spent on Bar Kamtza as a victim rather than analyzing <i>his</i> treachery.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></li>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">In fact the story of Bar Kamtza (and the other narrative paradigm of "<i>libun berabim</i>", the ma'aseh of Yehuda/Tamar) both indicate it might be that these cases of never being <i>melaben</i> your sworn enemies are the exceptions that prove the rule:</span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Haba lemelabenecha, hashkem lemelabno.</span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">As much as BK's shame caused the Churban, R' Yochanan's declaration earlier in the narrative that ill-timed "humility...destroyed our Mikdash, burned our Heichal and exiled us from our land" indicates that pietist quietism was at least equally if not more responsible.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Bar Kamtzas need to be <i>publicly</i> called out.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">You know what they’ll do if they’re not.</span></div>
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The Odd Coghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04631555699756710917noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6705549154171325165.post-56963781628441095592020-01-24T11:22:00.004-08:002020-01-24T11:22:49.695-08:00Vaera: Lip Snip
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<span style="font-size: small;">Rav Aharon Lichtenstein has <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=-3q9U4HyBmwC&pg=PA247&lpg=PA247&dq=rabbi+aaron+lichtenstein+hebrew+paucity+of+sexual+vocabulary&source=bl&ots=Il7eELa6YX&sig=ACfU3U3Qm25QRTaJedPxJih0SBZfXvKVww&hl=en&ppis=_c&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjP37KTsJrnAhVsQt8KHQh5C9sQ6AEwAHoECAkQAQ#v=onepage&q=rabbi%20aaron%20lichtenstein%20hebrew%20paucity%20of%20sexual%20vocabulary&f=false">written</a>: "Rambam conten[ds] (Guide 3:8) that the sanctity of Hebrew was either derived from or reflected in the paucity of its sexual vocabulary..."</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">This point can be illustrated in the enigmatic Mosaic self-referential phrase that appears twice in this weeks parsha, "'<i>aral sefasayim</i>", ostensibly translated literally as "uncircumcised [of] lips", but usually translated (by us) as "impeded speech", or (by others) as "faltering lips".<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://www.sefaria.org/Exodus.6.12?lang=bi&with=Commentary&lang2=en">Rashi on 6:12</a> provides a series of examples from throughout Tanach which indicate that the <i>primary</i> translation of the root ערל is, in fact, "obstruction", and, in line with the Maimonidean observation, "foreskin" is at best a secondary translation: the association of ערל with numerous parts of anatomy other than the membrum--hearts, ears, and even trees/plants--indicate that "foreskin" as the salient image might be counterintuitive.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">Which is why <a href="https://mosaicmagazine.com/observation/religion-holidays/2020/01/who-pisseth-against-the-wall/">Philologos' recent urgings</a> that "the need to excise profanity from the Bible is fundamentally inane" when discussing how to translate <i>mashtin b’kir; </i>he much prefers the 1599 Geneva Bible's "pisseth against the wall" and Robert Alter's "pisser against the wall" as opposed to "other Bible translators and commentators[/]medieval rabbinic exegetes who have held that sacred scripture would never speak so profanely of the human body".</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">One can safely assume that Philologos [and, by extension, Alter] doesn't take this approach to make the Bible accessible to those who would desacralize it, even if he does protest that "[a] book that is chock-full of stories about murder, rape, plunder, and assorted acts of human depravity cannot be deemed too dignified for coarse language", a statement which might betray a stunted understanding of Tanach beyond a superficial level.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>However, the fact that even he notes that <i>mashtin b’kir </i>appears six times in Tanach, the other five times used by G-d himself in prophetic messages, further undermines his insistence: srely an "edge of vulgarity" doesn't need to be "perfectly right for G-d's anger", whether or not it was right for David's.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">If you'll excuse the expression: it takes the piss out of Philologos' argument; rather, the real "inanity" is the compulsion to see vulgarity where there doesn't need to be.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>(No matter how many times the word "ass" is used in no matter how many translations.)</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">Of course, this appraoch can be taken to an extreme, the <a href="https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/the-torah-wasnt-censored-so-why-censor-jewish-books-censored-today/">best example</a> being with the Artscroll translation of Shir HaShirim.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://haemtza.blogspot.com/2011/04/artscrolls-shir-hashirim-good_24.html">Rabbi Harry Maryles</a> likely explains why better than most:<br />
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<i>"Shir HaShirim is an instance where I believe the Charedi obsession with Tznius has lead them astray. Because of it they manage to completely ignore the actual words of Shir HaShirim in translation. Although they are upfront about it and say that it is not meant to be literal and that it is based on Rashi’s allegorical interpretation - I believe it undermines the author’s intent which is to convey God’s love of his people in an allegorically human way...It is one thing to say that Shir HaShirim is an allegory. It is. But to ignore the beauty of Shlomo HaMelech’s actual narrative in my view completely misunderstands why R’ Akiva thought this book is the holy of holies - and why it remained in the canon. Nowhere does it say that we are to distort the translation to fit the allegorical interpretation. And yet this is exactly what ArtScroll did."<br />
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</i><a href="https://library.yctorah.org/audio/how-should-modern-orthodox-jews-translate-shir-hashirim/">Rabbi Aryeh Klapper</a> and the Center for Modern Torah Leadership's <a href="http://www.torahleadership.org/categories/shirhashirimtransyi1.pdf">translation</a> of Shir HaShirim was developed in part to counter Artscroll's bowdlerization.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">Which is also why Rabbi Efrem Goldberg's recent plea against what he calls "<a href="https://rabbiefremgoldberg.org/read-posts/bombs-bursting-in-air-the-growing-problem-of-profanity/">the growing problem of profanity</a>" also misses a few crucial points leading one to believe the he doth protest too much. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">The first is that he repeatedly conflates vulgarity and obscenity, to the point that he feels it might be dangerous to listen to a speech delivered by the current President of the United States.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>This inaccruate conflation has both cultural and halachic ramifications: the President can never curse on the air, so the notion is self contradictory.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">The second is that he dismisses out of hand research he sites: "Shouldn’t we believe the research that says <a href="https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2018/01/science-swearing-profanity-curse-emma-byrne/"><span class="s1">cursing has positive benefits</span></a>? </span><span style="font-size: small;">The answer is no. Giving in to the urge to use a profanity is to forfeit our very humanity and indulge an animal impulse."</span><span class="Apple-converted-space" style="font-size: small;"> </span><span style="font-size: small;">This misses the opportunity for a foundational teachable moment: instead of decrying the effects of vulgarity/obscenity and insisting it can never be beneficial, rather employ the kosher food analog: "it might be tasty, but what can I do, I have been commanded to not partake."</span></div>
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The third point is that subjectivity is injected into what should be an objective analysis: "Whenever I hear someone curse to try to make a point, I can’t help but think if they were more intelligent they would find a more effective way to communicate that point without needing to distract with the shock value of using an obscenity. I am always less impressed..."<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Aside from the subjectivity, the goalposts have been moved: the standard is whether he will be impressed or not by the expletive.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">The fact that there exists a "<i>pi'el</i>" and "<i>pu'al</i>" in Hebrew grammar indicates that sometimes there is a need for the emphatic, even if not necessarily the vulgar.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">Or, as the eminent sportswriter Paul Zimmerman put it when explaining why NFL coaches swear:</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">"There's a big difference between an idiot and a @&$%ing idiot."</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">In fact, one might even ask if in some cases whether using "fighting words" might be appropriate as a matter of personal defense: it might serve to deter a potential attack, or might diffuse a phyiscal altercation into a verbal, an altogether better result.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>The cases where such language may be used are likely very rare; but it should be looked into.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">Where Rabbi Goldberg might have a salient point is if he feels that speakers feel the <i>need </i>to be vulgar, as if it was almost a "mitzvah" to both be vulgar and for an audience to be foreced to accept that vulgarity.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>This would also seem to be the problem with the Philologos/Alter approach to <i>mashtin b’kir:<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></i> that one almost must accept that David <i>had</i> to be vulgar in that situation and that the Bible would report it favorably.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>If someone <i>insists </i>on vulgarity as a positive necessity--<i>then </i>you start asking questions about both the message and the messenger.</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span style="font-size: small;">Would give a whole new meaning to "'aral sefasayim."</span></div>
The Odd Coghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04631555699756710917noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6705549154171325165.post-26182083967693261632019-12-20T11:36:00.002-08:002019-12-20T12:27:10.975-08:00Chanukah and Intersectionellenism<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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The late eminent atheist (and, as it turned out, genealogical Jew) Christopher Hitchens had a particularly nasty bug up his nose about Chanukah:</div>
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<i>“When the fanatics of Palestine won that victory, and when Judaism repudiated Athens for Jerusalem, the development of the whole of humanity was terribly retarded….</i> <i>The display of the menorah at this season…has a precise meaning and is an explicit celebration of the original victory of bloody-minded faith over enlightenment and reason.”<br />
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</i>Give Hitchens some credit: while he ultimately blames the Jews and Judaism for all ostensible “faith oppression” (how very Voltairean of him, blaming the Jews and Judaism for all types of theocentrism) at the very least, he leveled equal opprobrium at all faiths, unlike many of his erstwhile liberal colleagues who never forgave him for siding with the GOP in the second Gulf War, or maybe even for pegging the beginning of the reign of Islamist terrorism to Ayatollah Khomeini’s fatwa on Salman Rushdie. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
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However, while Hitchens’ aforementioned erstwhile comrades-in-arms never forgave him for his abandonment of progressive tenets vis-à-vis the obligation to grant succor to certain non-Western faith prerogatives no matter how reactionary or violent, they certainly have maintained agreement with his rather dire assessment of Jews and Judaism, especially the nominally Jewish progressives who would certainly find much in common with Hitchens’ Judeophobic sentiments.</div>
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Ironically, as Yoram Hazony details in his “The Philosophy of Hebrew Scripture”, the “Athens” that Hitchens for all intents and purposes worships (despite—or perhaps because of—the near certainty that Hitchens himself would violently disagree with the characterization) held itself to be a genuine tradition with oracular foundations, while prophetic Judaism was disdained as overly tied to reasoned argument and insufficiently revelatory bases.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Thus, Hitchens and his cohorts find themselves in the unique position of being more self-righteous “religious” advocates than the ostensible theological reactionaries they decry, even if either too obtuse to realize it or too disingenuous to admit it.<br />
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Ergo, the Hellenizers of the Chanukah story, who are often viewed as more “open-minded” than their Maccabean counterparts, turn out to not only have been as imperialist as their newly found Greek allies and dually treasonous in both political and theological terms, but also similarly obtuse and/or disingenuous: either they were dumb enough to think that hybridizing Judaism and Hellenism was a salient option; or, more likely, they already knew that what their distortion was very much as faith based—if not more—than the faith of their fathers they felt compelled to abandon, but they needed a marketing ploy to convince some of their brethren to join them in their quislingery.<br />
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Unfortunately, it worked: Chanukah is as much a lament as a celebration, as it was the first Jewish civil war where the battles involved a sizable cohort of own openly joining up with our oppressors.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Recent current events indicate that this “tradition” persists, particularly with regard to those of our faith who either try to marry Judaism with progressive tenets which present as more “modern” or “advanced”, but which everyone knows are considered even more inviolate than the most reactionary catechisms by their adherents and promulgators.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
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One need not list all the usual suspects of those professing to be of our faith whose primary allegiance until death (usually yours, not theirs) is ultimately intersectionality (they know who they are).<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>However, a few recent events illuminate the pattern, mostly involving pretending all antisemitism is right wing while either ignoring or allying with actual anti-Semites of the other wing.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>In fact, one need not ignore the danger from the right or even downplay it to recognize that the threat from the left—especially the intersectional left—is more dangerous on several fronts, not least because it has culturally misappropriated and distorted otherwise sound Jewish principles and gaslit some otherwise good people into believing that they might be on the wrong side.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>And make no mistake: they are more “religious” about intersectional “principles” than the most Ultra of the Orthodox.<br />
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Three recent events in the run up to Chanukah should serve as red lines vis a vis with-us-or-against-us, Jews or Intersectionellenists: finally including Jews under Title VI protections that didn’t cover them up to now; the UK’s resounding electoral repudiation of Jeremy Corbyn (and hopefully, his allies in the US); and the revelation of victim blaming from “civil rights” quarters where the terrorist perpetrators of the Jersey City massacre are excused for the atrocity.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>The choice is certainly binary now, if it wasn’t before.</div>
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Oh, and Happy Chanukah, Mr. Hitchens. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
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They probably told you in Hell the oil they boil you in lasts for only one day. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
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It lasts for eight.</div>
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<br />The Odd Coghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04631555699756710917noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6705549154171325165.post-24946068014616367072019-11-09T21:56:00.001-08:002019-11-09T21:59:39.859-08:00Lech Lecha--Boundaries<style type="text/css">
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Gen. 12:6--<i>The Canaanites were then in the land</i></div>
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Gen. 13:7--<i>The Canaanites and Perizzites were then dwelling in the land</i></div>
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When Avraham Avinu is sent on his first sojourn, the Torah reports--pace Rashi on 12:6--that the Cannanites were in the process of conquering the local area from the children of Shem, to whom the land was granted after the Flood.</div>
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When he returns from his short Egyptian tour, and his sheperd have a territorial rift with Lot's sheperds, the Torah uses a slightly different turn of phrase, as if to say the conquest was at least de facto recognized.</div>
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This set of circumstances may or may not be in conflict withthe very first Rashi in the Torah, where the idea that the land of Canaan somehow "belonged" to the Canaanites before we "took" it, but that said appropriation was Divinely justified.</div>
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(Aside from the Rashi/Midrashim, "Canaan" is oft used in contemporary times as a pedagogical and political paradigm; pedagogical: to paraphrase Rav Zev Leff, it's no accident that Jews, the ultimate slaves to G-d, are given the land frst given to Canaan, bearer of the curse of eternal servitude; and political, in that some enemies of the Jews from without and within have become enamored with the idea that there are modern "Canaanites" who are the true indigenous inhabitants of Israel, ignoring the fact that making use of the Torah to justify said claim simutaneously undermines it, as the Canaanites are identified as the original "occupiers".<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Like the argument of Geviha ben Pesisa (idenitifed as the "first Jewish lawyer") in Chelek (TB San. 91a): "You bring the Torah? I will also [beat] you with the Torah.")</div>
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Yet, Rashi also reports at 13:7 that when Lot's sheperds tried to use G-d's future promises to Avraham regarding the land and the fact that at the time Lot was Avraham's sole putative heir to justify their larcenous grazing as if the land was already theirs, the answer from Avraham's camp was "it isn't yours yet"; the actual historical fact of Abrahamic possesion was not yet established, even given the ab initio illegitimacy of the Canaanite conquest.</div>
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This might raise separate questions as to when legitimacy is de facto accorded to de jure misappropriation, but at any rate, the immedate result of this wooly imbroglio is that Avraham channels his inner Dylan in 13:9: "you go your way, I go mine", and Lot departs, muttering sotto voce "I want neither Abram nor his God".<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>The Abrahamic ideal was "tried" by Lot and his sheperds in a rather narcissistic and disngenuous manner--using prophecy/religion to justify theft--and subsequently found wanting and left truly untried: Lot walks away from the the entire enterprise.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>(Interestingly, Avraham Avinu, the mekarev par excellence of his time, didn't impose further: at this point he lets Lot choose his own derech, likely realizing from this incident that any pretentions to piety on Lot's part are ultimately self-serving.)</div>
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Lot and his minions also have being saying that it was a "mitzvah to steal from the goyim".<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>This mindset might present itself in contemporary times as either the gross misconception that stealing outside the tribe is ever sanctioned, or that appropriation of disputed private promontories outside proper channels is somehow meritorious.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>It's possible that the near-repetition of "Canaanites in the land" might be a hint that this kind of behavior in fact resembles a "ma'aseh eretz Canaan", underscored by the medrash where Canaan tells his children to "love theft" (TB Pesachim 113b).</div>
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The contemporary takeaways might be the following: one, never use religion or nationalism as a basis to justify purely personal ends--"the personal is political" as a prescriptive is an anything <i>but </i>Jewish philosophy; two, this has no bearing on proper attitudes towards those who wish us harm because we are Jewish: there are proper religious <i>and</i> extra-religious channels through which they can be dealt with, and none of them have to nor ever should involve misappropriation or personal-level harrassment (or worse); third--and this is a longer, more involved discussion--one might be able to distinguish between an individual as ostensible bigot (because minds can be changed, although in a day and age where evil designs more often than not may be expressed in semi-public digital fora, all declared Judeomisics bear watching) and a Judeomisic public figure cashing in on antisemitism, where public opprobrium is only the first among legitimate options in countering the danger.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
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But you still don't take their stuff.</div>
The Odd Coghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04631555699756710917noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6705549154171325165.post-52688925172312135342019-09-13T15:28:00.001-07:002019-09-13T15:31:41.605-07:00Ki Teitzei--Borders<style type="text/css">
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<span style="font-size: small;">The various currently suspended halachos regarding which converts of which various nations can marry into Israel might prove to be instructive in another way.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Specifically, they might be indicative of how to draw borders and maintain border security; or, at least, they might obviate the idea that an "open borders" policy is a "Torahdikke" one.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">In this week's parsha, we discover that of converts from<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Edom and Egypt--of either gender--may marry into the Jewish people after three generations, but male Moabite and Ammonite converts may never marry into the Jewish people.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">Meanwhile the Jews have been admonished earlier to not harrass the Ammonites and Moabites, ostensibly owing to their being related to us through Lot.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>This might explain why--before the incident at Shittim--the Jews are as respectful of the Moabite and Ammonite borders as they are of the Edomite borders; and while the Edomites meet them fully armed at <i>their</i> border, innthe immediate term Moab and Ammon, while not helping ["<i>lo kidmu belechem ve'mayim]</i>,<i> </i>weren't overtly hostile.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">This begs the question: why do they come in for the most draconia level of exclusion, while the Edomites (who were overtly hostile) and the Egyptians (who enslaved us and attmepted genocide on other occasions) don't come in for the same level of restriction?</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">Vis a vis Moab, we have a rathe simple explanation: the nonaggression policy wasn't reciprocated by the Moabites.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>As Tosfos BK 38a s.v "Nasa Kal Vachomer" explains, the Moabites broke the pact when they hired Bilaam. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">The Kli Yakar explains that Bilaam told the Ammonites and Moabites not to offer bread and water, and in their hunger, the Jews would eat from the altars of Moab's idols, and due to their thirst, the daughters of Moab would be able to ensnare them by giving them wine and then offering themselves on condition that they worship their idols first.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">These incidents explain however indirectly how: there are legitimate ways to defend borders; there are illegitimate ways of gaslighting under the guise of "aid"; and, finally and most importantly--because this bears repeating--a "ger" is <i>not</i> an immigrant.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">In a sense, Egypt dealt with us in part in a more legitimate fashion than Moav: the Egyptians invited us in unconditionally as legal immigrants, and then changed their minds.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Moav at first didn't invite us (and we weren't even looking to settle!!!),<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>and then gaslit us and used our hunger to "invite" us in on their own terms which was to our detriment.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Furthermore, the Egyptians didn't deliberately destroy their own society to get at us--G-d did that for them with the plagues.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Moav did, by pimping out its entire womanhood (which might further explain why only the men were closed out of conversion: the women might have been "drafted").<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Also, by engaing Bilaam, Moab's war became as much about annihilation as Egypt's slavery.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>In the end, they're a lot cloer to Amalek than Mitzrayim, or even Edom, Amalek's grandfather, Edom, who met us en masse at the border, but didn't make any other hostile pretenses.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">So what we have is Egypt, who invited the Hebrews/Jews as guests under legitimate pretenses and then turned on them; Edom, who made no pretenses other than defending their borders; and Moav, who repaid nonaggression with both physical and spiritual war.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">Egypt was severely punished, but the punshiment ended at the Red Sea; the reason to not be “hate Egypt” is because they took you in when their government forced you to and endured wholesale changes to their way of life and then were destroyed when they became xenophobic.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>The xenophobia was severely punished, but national integrity and borders were a legitimate issue.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>So they get 3 generations, as do Edom, who fares no worse than Egypt.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">Moav/Ammon are the most restricted, commensurate with the level of hostility and treachery: they weren’t foreign to you; there may have been least some split in the popular opinion, seeing that the women are exempt from the restriction, and even the ones who were in the avel shittim averaged may have been “drafted”.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Moav, essentially, had less respect for its <i>own</i> borders than the Jews did.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">It's been mentioned several times in these pages that no matter how many times the Torah says not to oppress the "ger", it doesn't bring the definition of "ger" any closer to "immigrant" .<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>BT BM 59a lays out why: the primary reason given to not oppress the ger is that the <i>convert will be tempted to defect</i>, indicating that the primary issue is a religious one rather than a political one.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> E</span></span>ven when the same Gemara mentions you were "gerim", it brings us back to our orignal point: you were legal invited immigrants,<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><i>THEN</i> you were betrayed.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>A "ger" who committed oneself to all the protocols involved in gerus: THAT'S who you're supposed to love and not oppress and not betray.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>If gerus were a real model for immigration, we might attempt to dissuade every potential border crosser three times before we considered allowing them in. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">Those who would link shibud mitzrayim with the ostensible plight of border crashers commit a rather egregious form of cultural misappropriation; even worse, they commit it from within.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Not only does advocating for stricter immigration law not violate this injuction, but the two "mumin" of gerus mitzrayim and "Abolish ICE" are not remotely comparable. The analog is at best intellectually dishonest, and at worst--disloyal.</span></div>
The Odd Coghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04631555699756710917noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6705549154171325165.post-67516169989595154332019-07-26T14:44:00.002-07:002019-07-26T14:45:30.422-07:00Pinchas: Zimreality Bites<style type="text/css">
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As has been detailed previously <a href="http://yeush.blogspot.com/2008/07/pinchas-and-extremism.html">in these pages</a>, the "zealotry" and "extermism" of Pinchas is often misunderstood, sometimes deliberately (the <a href="https://www.jewishideas.org/article/zealotry-and-its-consequences-case-yishai-schlissel">self-proclaimed "zealot"</a> who murdered Shira Banki in Jerusalem being one such example of the misapplication). <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
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Yet discussions of not only Pinchas' action, but also the sordid deeds of Zimri sometimes gets limited to the direct halachic implications surrounding the narrative; larger hashkafic questions about why this became the climax of the national emergency, and why, get lost in the legal details.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
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The narrative as related in TB Sanhedrin 82 indicates how a "Prince in Israel" was overcome by Balaamic tendencies in the midst of a national emergency, indulging his need to conquer on political and personal fronts.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>As Bilaam's "desperation pass" ("come let me advise", 24:14)<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>has hit its mark with a mass idolatrous orgy, a concimtant plague, and near mass executions, Zimri takes the opportunity to execute a Balaamic grand slam:<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
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<li>He asserts his leadership bonafides: "<b><i>Kozbi:</i></b><i> I am the king's daughter. My father asked me to have Bi'ah with the most important Yisrael </i><b><i>Zimri:</i></b><i> I am Nasi of a Shevet, and my Shevet was born second to Yakov, before Levi (Moshe's Shevet), which was third!</i>";</li>
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<li>He tries his hand at <i>p'sak: "Zimri took her in front of Moshe, and asked 'is she permitted or forbidden? If you say that she is forbidden, who permitted you to marry Yisro's daughter?!</i>";</li>
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<li>He (over)indulges his lusts: "<i>He had 60 acts of Bi'ah</i>";</li>
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<li>He does this all not simply <i>befarhesia</i>, but in the <i>Ohel Moed</i> itself.</li>
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What might even be more disconcerting about this is how first his tribesmen, and then the populace at large, at first encourage, then enable, and then defend the executed Zimri and disparage Pinchas:</div>
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<li>Encourage: "<i>Shevet Shimon complained to Zimri (its Nasi) that they were being sentenced to death. He took 24,000 Yisraelim and asked Kozbi to have Bi'ah with him.</i>"</li>
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<li>Enable: "<i>They thought [Pinchas] also wanted to sin [-] [Pinchas] removed the dagger at the end of his spear and put it in his garment. He used it as a walking staff and came to Shevet Shimon [and said] <b>"</b>Where do we find that Levi is greater than Shimon?" (Also we can do like you!)[-] so they allowed him to enter the tent of Zimri.</i>"</li>
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<li>Defend: <i>"The tribes were scorning Pinchas - 'this son of Puti, whose grandfather (Yisro) was Pitem (fattened) calves for idolatry, killed the Nasi of a Shevet!'</i>"</li>
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Zimri, in effect, becomes the archetype of one who would sell out his own people to their enemies for his own aggrandizement and gratification.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Even Korach didn't do this: while there was certainly something egregious about tying up his quest for power in a spiritual guise, the fact that Korach at least "merited" a miraculous intervention to being about his demise indicates that, as inappropriate as his power grab was, it was an internecine offense.</div>
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Zimri's offense wasn't that. Zimri, as it were, sided with the enemy in a time of war: while the Moabite mass seduction was aimed at the general populace, the Midianite harlotry was aimed right at the upper echelon.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Unlike Korach, Zimri's motivations aren't as extensively parsed, but the results are spelled out: he influenced a not insignficant number of his tribesmen that his conduct was preferable.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>The fact that he met a rather and sordid and ignoble in public indicates the baser nature of his offenses.</div>
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In other words, Korach, while trying to upend the system, wasnt employing completely alien influences to foment his rebellion.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Zimri was, and his primary influence was Bilaam, even if he was was too libidinally addled to realize it.</div>
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Finally, we saw last week that Bilaam was among other things a master cultural appropriator:<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
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<li>Balak, told about Moshe that "his power lies only in his mouth", and is compelled to engage an antagonist "whose power was also in his mouth";<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></li>
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<li>Bilaam has pretentions toward <i>nevuah</i>, and in fact is identified in the literature as one, but the nature of his visions are downgraded, and he eventually has to fall back on his original divination skills, betraying his envy for the former when he declares "let my end be like his".</li>
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What Zimri does by executing the aforementioned Ballamic power play resembles the methods of misapprorations and gaslighting used by contemporary internal enemies of the Jews: taking our own principles ("is this allowed? Who allowed you?") and using them against us in battles against our enemies; somehow managing to attract a mass following (his whole tribe was behind him); whilst arrogating unearned poitical legitimacy to oneself ("the most important Yisrael"). <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
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The list of current ostensible/erstwhile Jewish eminences who defend our people's most ardent detractors while insisting that their approach is <i>the</i> true expression of Judaism is too long to recount here. But those Zimris are carrying out Bilaam's mission all over again.</div>
The Odd Coghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04631555699756710917noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6705549154171325165.post-79129387266810158682019-07-19T14:21:00.001-07:002019-07-19T14:23:06.371-07:00Balak: Balaamic Vinegar<style type="text/css">
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">In Parshas Korach, we meet a disingenuous liberator: Korach proclaims "k<i>ol haedah kulam kdeoshim"</i>, while--as On ben Peles' wife pointed out to her husband--he likely meant to rule just as ostensibly absolutely.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><i>Posel b'mumo</i>, indeed.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Last week, in Chukas, we saw--if you would--the "preseason" of the wars of conquest: Edom and Moav massing at their border, the mountains crushing the lying-in-wait Amorites, Sichon, and Og.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">This week, we meet another disingenuous liberator: Bilaam.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>In fact, a surface glance at Bilaam's personality as per midrashim ostensibly borders on libertinist anarchism:<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Bilaam is deemed to be the first public advocate for unfettered carnality since the Mabul; and he is deemed to be "belo am", a one-world, open-borders guru. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Several ironies in the narrative expose his blatant disingenuousness woith regard to his ostensible cosmopolitanism and liberitnism:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">*Bilaam uses his libertinism as an tool of war, counting on the licentiousness to invite Divine retribution--knowing it would make G-d angry at the Jews and not the Moabites indicates that he was aware of indelible national distinctions, and the libertinism he preached would ultimately not be as freeing, but destructive to both his emeny and ultimately his client.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">*Bilaam is presonally even more--er--libertine than he is willing to let on, the donkey revealed the <i>"ishus balaila"</i>.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>One can speculate that either Bilaam is so frustrated by turning his libertinism into a <i>chiyuv</i> of sorts that he seeks out [ahem] comanionship where he could finally find it, because being libertine became an obligation, rather than an "alternative".<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Yet he even he feels constrained enough by some baseline morality that he can't make everything he does public.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">(It's also possible that Bilaam's ultimate attitude resembles King Amon as related in <a href="https://www.sefaria.org/Sanhedrin.103b.11?lang=bi&with=all&lang2=en">Chelek</a>, while in bed with his mother [!]:)</span><i>"Do you have any pleasure by engaging in intercourse from the place from which you emerged? He said to her: I am doing this only to express insolence to my Creator...)</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">*The Belo 'Am, open-borders Bilaam is less a dissident and more a mercenary with an impressive client list: Kush, where he batlles the exiled Moshe; Egypt, where he advises Pharaoh to promote slavery and genocide; Sichon, who hires him to curse Moav when Moav was winning that war; and Moav, where he uses Midian--an erstwhile enemy of Moav--to aid Moav.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Somehow--not unlike contemporary Palestinian nationalism's most ardent external sycophants--all of his efforts are aimed to erase one nation, not any of the others (while he is credited with the elegy for Moav at the end of Chukas, it didn't prevent him from working with them later.)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">In being forced by G-d to speak in complete contradistinction to his desires, Bilaam is also forced to publicly undercut (for all time, having it encoded in the Oraitic text) his professed tenets:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">*He praises the Jews' privacy/<i>tznius</i> in "<i>Mah Tovu</i>": Bilaam is forced to praise a belief system that completely undercuts his libertinism.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">*He desires a "<i>mos yesharim</i>": he hopes (almost like St. Augustine--"give me chastity, but not yet") that he can gain a Heavenly portion without the effort of abandoning his libertinism.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">*He is forced to endure "nationalist" visions ("reshis goyim malek"): he is forced to acknoweldge that the ultimate eschatologiscal vision ("acharis hayamim") involves national demarcations, as opposed to his porfessed utopian "belo am".</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">The Balaamic penchant for erasing moral baselines and the concomitant domino/boomerang effects are bipartisan maladies.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>One one hand, Peter Singer, the eminent animal liberator who has been called "<a href="https://townhall.com/columnists/marvinolasky/2004/12/02/the-most-influential-philosopher-alive-n984666">the most influential philosopher alive</a>", has written about <a href="http://www.jpe.ox.ac.uk/papers/twenty-questions/">removing the moral stigma</a> from<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>bestiality (more of <i>inyana deyoma </i>than one might think, considering Bilaam's secret), infanticide, and even <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/03/opinion/who-is-the-victim-in-the-anna-stubblefield-case.html?_r=0">rape</a>.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>On the other side of the political fence, as I <a href="https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/church-scandals/">wrote in 2003</a>, just when the Catholic Church's history of depredation was finally just beginning to be exposed and condemned:<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">"The "terminal decline" of the Church’s influence on moral, political, and cultural life in the West, so lamented by Mr. Johnson, did indeed begin when it abrogated what he calls its mission of "challenging the assumptions of its environment": i.e., once the Church decided to not halp save the Jews, it wouldn't be a stretch for them to not save their own internal victims of sexual assault and child abuse."</span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">The second area where ostensible crusades for "freedom" succeed is that they become more dogmatic and oppressive to a degree that far exceeds the systems overthrown for their purported "benightedness", and those in power will nearly always exempt themselves from the maintaining the conduct they demand of their adherents.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Korach knew well enough how the system worked that even if he was going to survive the test, none of his followers would; he was willing to sacrifice the for his own aggrandizement.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Bilaam's crusade for freedom was all about enriching and gratifying himself at everyone's expense; he was willing to employ the very systems he was ostensibly trying to overthrow--political <i>and</i> spiritual--partiuclarly because he recognized their truth, even up close. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Furthermore, as per <a href="https://www.sefaria.org/Sanhedrin.106b?lang=bi">TB Sanhedrin 106</a>, the Moabite women conscripted into the Balaamic scheme used his gaslighting method, first making their prey believe they were doing nothing wrong--"<i>He then said to her: Submit to me and engage in intercourse with me. She then removed the idol that she worshipped from her lap and said to him: Worship this. He said to her: Am I not Jewish? I am therefore forbidden from engaging in idol worship. She said to him: And what is your concern? We are asking you to do nothing more than defecate in its presence. But he does not know that its worship is conducted in that manner</i>"--and then, after playing the "libertine" card, she would become dogmatic: "<i>Once he did so, she said to him: Moreover, I will not leave you until you deny the Torah of Moses your teacher, as it is stated: “But when they came to Ba’al-Peor they separated themselves to the shameful item; and they became detestable like that which they loved” (</i><a href="https://www.sefaria.org/Hosea.9.10"><span class="s1"><i>Hosea 9:10</i></span></a><i>)</i>." <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">One should note how badly gaslit the offenders were by women who had basically been turned out en masse by their own Moabite leaders...and then one fo our own joined the gaslighting: Zimri, whose public demise ends the sordid part of the narrative.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Next week, we examine how that worked.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">The Balaamic gaslighting continues to this day, and too many of our co-religionists continue to fall for it.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>This has implications on both macro and micro--or, political and personal--levels.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">As far as the macro/political--very few can <a href="https://torah.org/torah-portion/rabbiwein-5768-balak/">explain</a> it <a href="https://torah.org/torah-portion/rabbiwein-5771-balak/">better</a> than <a href="https://torah.org/torah-portion/rabbiwein-5772-balak/">Rabbi Berel Wein</a>:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><i>"Bilaam is a non-governmental, allegedly not-for-profit, one man organization, proclaiming great ideals while at the same time condoning enslavement and murder of thousands. And, in spite of his protestations of idealism and even-handedness, he is for hire.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>He is the original spin artist, the public relations genius, the amoral unprincipled guru looking always for new clients</i>."</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">On the micro/personal level, too many find themselves enticed by the siren song of belonging at the price of abandoning the core of one's identity, one hears promises of broken chains, only to find oneself in heavier fetters. Instead of working from within our own system of rule--even if/when ostensibly onerous, ultimately some replace it with other regimens that prove to be a lot less forgiving: another series of obligations towards others at your expense, while no one else feels compelled to fulfill any obligations towards you.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>To quote <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zOa_45tu1Lo">Henry Rollins</a>:<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><i>Freedom?<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>You can't handle freedom/And now you're dyin' for it</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">G-d laments to <a href="https://www.sefaria.org/Jeremiah.2.13?lang=bi&with=all&lang2=en">Yirmeyahu</a>: "They have forsaken Me, the Fount of living waters, and hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns, which cannot even hold water"; but when the intoxication becomes particularly acute, they forsake wine for Balaamic vinegar.</span></div>
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The Odd Coghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04631555699756710917noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6705549154171325165.post-56456998369366448762019-05-16T20:41:00.002-07:002019-05-19T19:14:05.410-07:00Emor—Safe, Legal and Rare<style type="text/css">
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<span style="font-size: small;">In 1995, Rabbi Aharon Soloveichik sent this <a href="https://books.google.co.il/books?id=R-MCAAAAMBAJ&lpg=PA52&ots=jItxxWAdmU&dq=law+mandating+the+death+penalty+and+the+oral+law%2C+saying%2C+in+effect%2C+that+you+can+never&pg=PA52#v=onepage&q&f=false">message </a>to New York State’s then-Governor-elect George Pataki regarding the death penalty:</span></div>
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<i><span style="font-size: small;">“…you have the written law mandating the death penalty and the oral law, saying, in effect, that you can never apply it…Now, the death penalty should be there for use in extraordinary situations, in extraordinary threats to the public order…but if [Pataki] acts on the death penalty, he will be the leader of a bloody government.” </span></i><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;">Placed in the middle of a series of verses dealing with torts—which in and of itself seems to be ostensibly acontextual coming in the middle of the narrative about the maternal Danite blasphemer—verse 24:17 in this week’s parsha is one of a multiple set of Torah directives to administer the death penalty for willful murder.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">The aftermath of the recent terrorist massacre at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh engendered a broad media-driven discussion regarding the “true” Jewish view of the death penalty.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>The consensus presented classical Judaism as invariably abolitionist.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>In light of Rabbi Soloveichik’s 1995 letter—whether today’s pundits were aware of his position or not—one might forgive one particular headline/declaration which took upon itself to <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/2018/10/31/prosecutors-want-death-penalty-robert-bowers-heres-why-rabbis-oppose-it/?utm_term=.b4168d7506bc">declare</a> “Prosecutors want the death penalty for suspect in synagogue massacre. Here’s why rabbis oppose it<b>.</b>”<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>It was a bit glib even more them: the paper felt compelled enough to issue the following caveat the next day: “This story has been updated to clarify the breadth of Jewish views on the death penalty.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">More poignant was the <a href="https://www.jta.org/2019/02/19/opinion/the-pittsburgh-shooter-could-have-killed-my-husband-i-still-dont-want-him-to-get-the-death-penalty">published declaration</a> of a Tree of Life congregant whose husband had survived the attack: “The Pittsburgh shooter could have killed my husband. I still don’t want him to get the death penalty.” <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>While the author of the piece might capture some of the spirit, but she employs several inaccuracies to get there.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">“Although there are many Torah prohibitions that call for a death sentence, our tradition does not interpret them literally.” <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>This assertion is of a piece with the author’s contention that Biblical tort law—as presented in this weeks parsha and elsewhere—was “literally” <i>lex talionis </i>a la Hammurabi<i>,</i> which the halachic tradition contends clearly and consistently was never the case; the author therefore presents an alternative tradition which is at odds with the normative one, both vis a vis tort and capital cases.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>At any rate, the corpus of laws that make up the bulk of Maseches Sanhedrin which instruct when the penalty applies and how it is to be carried out indicates that, at the very least, it certainly wasn’t allegorical. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">“According to the Mishnah, a Jewish court is considered bloodthirsty if it allows the death penalty to be carried out once every 70 years, with some of the rabbinic sages balking at ever approving the sentence. (Mishnah Makkos 1:10).”<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>The author neglects to mention that very mishnah ends this way: '; Rabban Simeon ben Gamaliel said: 'If [no death sentence would ever have been passed], they would have multiplied murderers in Israel.'"<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>In fact, bas din would administer a standing cell punishment ending in a rather uncomfortable demise for the deliberate murderer whose crime couldn’t be clearly established beyond all doubt by witness testimony, in order to protect the public. There are clearly distinctions drawn between ritual or relational capital offenses, and outright criminal offenses that involve bloodshed, certainly mass bloodshed</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">The author then cites the example of TB Brachos 10a where Bruria convinces her husband Rabbi Meir to pray that robbers in his neighborhood repent rather than die, and the more recent story of white nationalist Derek Black, who renounced his beliefs after spending time around a Shabbat table at his college.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>The author claims that these two narratives should “articulate the Jewish attitude toward those filled with hate.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">They shouldn't, and they don't.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">In the case of Bruria, Rabbi Meir and and the robbers, hate wasn’t the issue: it was a public nuisance, not a threat to public order, and the criminals were driven by greed, not hate.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>They didn’t present an ongoing clear and present danger to Jews qua Jews.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>And for all respect due Mr. Black for his transformation, he hadn’t killed anyone yet; repenting hateful beliefs is of a different order than repenting a hate-driven mass murder.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">The author also displays a misunderstanding of what repentance entails: “calling for the death penalty means there is no possibility for the shooter to repent, to change or to improve…I want to affirm that change is possible.”<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>In fact, the Talmud indicates that the condemned is afforded the chance to confess before the execution, and the sources indicate that Heaven would accept that repentance in a metaphysical sense; but it clearly indicates that is not for the earthly courts to forgive the outrage to the point that the punishment is to be commuted.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>It is not up to the author to “affirm that change is possible.” (Ironically, this is sometimes a claim one hears in more right-wing Orthodox circles regarding the possibility of miscreants like sex offenders and domestic abusers to “do teshuva” and who therefore deserve a mitigation of punishment and/or legal consequences, proving this misunderstanding of “teshuva”/repentance is not necessarily a function of denomination.)</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">In any case, there are strong indications that the clamoring against Bowers’ execution is politically driven, as indicated by the firestorm of criticism aimed at President Trump in the wake of the Pittsburgh attack, and the relatively muted reaction to the Poway attack over Passover, after which the Poway Rabbi praised the President.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>In fact, applying the Pittsburgh author’s standard, one might look for more mitigation and possibility of repentance from a 19 year old offender with an adolescent neurology rather than a 46 year old who will clearly<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>remain unrepentant whether or not he dies now or later.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>The author herself is consistent: she would afford even Dylann Roof the opportunity to repent.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>But the Poway attacks did not engender the discussion that ensued in the wake of Pittsburgh, and one would not be remiss to point he finger at politics.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">The author also introduces another red herring, that capital punishment is ipso facto “revenge” : “the true revenge against evil is that our congregation is working to strengthen ourselves as Jews.”<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>It is not revenge but rather justice that demands the death of Bowers.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Revenge might be if the <i>goel hadam</i> meted out the execution as opposed to the state; either way, there is no doubt that the Torah at least sanctions the notion of blood justice being retributive, even if in a limited sense.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">Where does all this leave Rav Aharon’s admonition?<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Not to misrepresent this author’s view as his, but one can parse a caveat from his 1995 letter: “extraordinary threats to the public order.”<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>In a post-9/11, web-driven world, one could proffer that there are more cases of extraordinary threats to public order that would meet an exceptional criterion, both legally and hashkafically.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">A contemporary capital punishment that approximates Torah values (for lack of a better formulation) would be safe, legal, and rare.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">“Safe”, in that it would be as antiseptic and painless as possible—the Talmud does say that, under the rubric of “<i>ve’ahavta lare’acha kamocha</i>”, to be “<i>beror lo misa yafa</i>”, that he the earth be as instantaneous and not gruesome, an analog of sorts to avoiding “cruel and unusual” punishment.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">“Legal”, in that it follow strict protocols to ensure that the punishment fit the crime and there is no possibility that the wrong person is being convicted—that it be a case where “<a href="https://oddcog.blogspot.com/2009/11/death-penalty-rebirth.html">there won’t be a lot of guilt-innocence maneuverability</a>”, as an Army lawyer described the Nidal Malik Hassan case.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>As has been detailed <a href="https://yeush.blogspot.com/2009/05/emor-due-process.html">elsewhere</a> in these pages, there is the unexpected appearance of the laws of capital murder, followed by the laws of assault, immediately followed by the exhortation that “<i>mishpat echad yih’yeh lachem</i>”—“you all have one law”:<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>listing of these cases after the the <i>mecharef</i>, followed by the “one law” exhortation, is a further indication of how the process delineated in the case of <i>chiruf/giduf</i> is as salient a “due process” as one applied in cases of torts and homicide.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>As clinical as that might sound, it may be what separates a fully legitimate application of capital punishment from vigilantism.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">“Rare”, in that the penalty is applied in cases where strict criteria are met, including but not limited to aggravating factors, where the offender presents an ongoing danger to the public, and where it makes eminent sense to make an offender pay the highest price, even if as a principle as opposed to a deterrent.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">This is not to say that the US’ version of the death penalty is always in consonance with Torah law, or even that the abolitionist view is irrevocably at odds with halacha.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>It might be possible that the Bowerses, Earnests and Hasans of the world could be the exceptions that prove the rule.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>However, it is equally disingenuous to claim that Torah unequivocally supports a complete moratorium on capital punishment in all cases nowadays.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>It is especially painful when Jews use those who commit Judeocidally motivated outrages as a paradigm for applying Jewish principles to advocate for said abolition.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>It is as much our right and privilege to not forgive those who commit those outrages, and it would further behoove us to not afford the persistently unrepentant the opportunity to change.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">Even on pain of death. Theirs.</span></div>
<br />The Odd Coghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04631555699756710917noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6705549154171325165.post-45296578173434903712019-05-03T13:33:00.005-07:002019-05-03T13:34:17.205-07:00Acharei Mos—The N-word
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<i>Shalosh seudos, UWS shul.<br /><br /><b>Rabbi</b>: “If people on a date would be as makpid on Leviticus 18 as they would be on the hechsher of the restaurant…”</i></div>
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<i style="font-weight: bold;">Congregant </i>(sotto voce)<i>: “Did he just say the N-word?”</i> </div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">How do you solve a problem like Negiah, especially the unwanted kind?</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_separation_in_Judaism">Eliminate</a> all extra-marital, extraneous communication between genders, especially during teen-age years, and insist on dress codes with varying levels of rigidity?<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>While one might think that it mostly works, and that there is no deviation from normative behavior in those communities, one would simply have to look at the narratives of more<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adass_Israel_School_sex_abuse_scandal"> high profile offenders</a> and communal efforts to spare consequences for that whole approach to be called into question.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">Suggest that <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/13/opinion/mayim-bialik-feminist-harvey-weinstein.html">“covering up”</a> will solve the problem? There couldn’t be a more blatantly obvious “<a href="https://variety.com/2017/tv/news/mayim-bialik-new-york-times-op-ed-backlash-harvey-weinstein-1202590950/">blame the victim</a>” approach.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://rabbipruzansky.com/2016/03/31/a-novel-idea/">Suggest</a> that “rape culture” is solely the result of “buyer’s remorse” following an unsatisfying hookup, and would be solved if women would behave, while just accepting that “[m]en are creatures who seek physical gratification in the first instance and who, lamentably, could find intimacy with complete strangers and be satisfied”?<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>If a spiritual eminence wants to attack what he thinks is the over sexualization of the campus and culture, he might a] address that both genders need to behave and b] if he desires extra credibility vis a vis these matters, he might<a href="https://yucommentator.org/2014/04/yeshiva-university-rabbis-professor-asked-for-leniency-for-child-abuser/"> think twice</a> about writing letters to mitigate the sentence of a sex offender who used an educational position to prey on minors.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">(TB Kesuvos 10a relates that a newly married groom came to Rav Nachman to complain that his bride wasn’t a virgin.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>The first thing Rav Nachman did was give the order to “Lash him with date branches! If he knows this, he must be regular with the harlots of the city!”<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>A clerical interest in reigning in both male and female sexuality—even making a token effort to recognize it—would be a more credible approach than throwing up one’s hands at the behavior of “men creatures”.)</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://forward.com/opinion/385424/no-modesty-wont-protect-you-from-the-harvey-weinsteins-but-this-might/">Suggest</a> that “yichud” might work better than “modesty”?<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>It won’t work if the predator is a relative, or if the predator is a position of power and can <a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-one-sex-abuse-case-tore-apart-the-williamsburg-hasidim">manipulate the environment</a> to his—or her—advantage.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">“<a href="https://jewinthecity.com/2019/04/just-assume-that-everyone-around-you-is-shomer-negiah/">Assume that everyone is shomer negiah</a>”?<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Ban all contact—even handshakes—<a href="https://www.ctvnews.ca/lifestyle/u-k-employers-may-consider-banning-handshakes-in-workplace-hr-expert-1.4394997">from the workplace</a>?<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>That it assumes that adult interaction and consent is impossible for anyone, leading to sanctions being levied at inappropriate times, which obviates both the need to draw lines, or the notion that lines have been drawn.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">Set higher strictures on touch because “touch is a potent marker of social power”, and turn shmiras negiah into a <a href="https://jewishjournal.com/culture/lifestyle/109068/physical-boundaries-the-social-justice-case-for-shomer-negiah/">social justice mandate</a>?<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>That would reduce human communication to yet another material currency in almost Marxist terms, and finish the job that pop culture seems to have done with sexuality: make it another currency.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Additionally, the statistics cited by the ostensible social justice warrior advocate for shmiras negiah regarding the incidence of assault within families and by familiar intimates indicate that it might be in those spaces where the restrictions are more palpable and the lines are more clearly drawn that there might actually be more danger.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">Is the primary goal, then, a completely touch free-environment?<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Is the primary goal drawing distinctions between consent and harassment?<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Or, do halachic values mandate that the two are one and the same?</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">The real issue—and which educators might be able to use as an objective to reach the goal of the “touch-free” environment that they teach as demanded by halacha—comes from the “assumption” suggestion:</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">“<a href="https://jewinthecity.com/2019/04/just-assume-that-everyone-around-you-is-shomer-negiah/">Don’t encroach on someone else’s personal space</a>.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">It then becomes a question of simple grown-up <i>derech eretz</i>: when someone says no, the answer is no.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>At that point it doesn’t matter anymore what the motivation is.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>And—if one assumes something along the lines that “no means yes”—it then progresses from a derech eretz issue to a police matter.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">Similarly, for too long the price of ostensibly excessive female sexuality has been a lot higher than male randiness.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>If nothing else, #metoo has led toward redressing that balance.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>There have certainly been <a href="https://www.vox.com/2014/10/13/6966847/yes-means-yes-is-a-terrible-bill-and-i-completely-support-it">excesses</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Rape_on_Campus">injustices</a> in that pursuit (although the persistent <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People_v._Turner">reluctance</a> to <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/06/the-montana-judge-who-blamed-a-14-year-old-for-her-own-rape-will-be-censured/372185/">punish</a> <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2019/05/03/bus-driver-shane-pinche-wont-go-prison-rape-hes-not-alone/3653181002/">rapists</a> almost hands a <i>pischon peh</i> on a silver platter to such progressive activists), but leveling the social price for extracurricular carnal activity on the part of both genders in a more equitable manner should be considered an appropriate educational objective, especially in the #metoo era.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">Finally, one shouldn’t discount the power of bad publicity.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>When R’ Yochanan ben Zakkai was on his deathbed (TB Berakhot 29b) he gave his students the following blessing:<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><b> “</b>May it be His will that fear of Heaven should be upon you like fear of people…[w]hen a person sins, he is concerned that no one see him.” <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>One day, “conquest” and procurement will go the way of slavery and polygamy.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">In the meantime, <i>derech eretz</i> and R’ Yochanan provide the baseline.</span></div>
The Odd Coghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04631555699756710917noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6705549154171325165.post-73668905796515700752019-03-28T22:50:00.001-07:002019-03-28T22:59:25.395-07:00Shemini—Ex Post Facto?<style type="text/css">
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<i><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">“I didn’t know it was illegal.”</span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">“Then why take the money in a brown paper bag in a dark back alley?”</span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">“I had a hunch.” </span></i></div>
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One of the reasons given for Nadav and Avihu’s death is that they performed their service while intoxicated.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">The question was raised at a morning minyan in my neighborhood this week: did G-d as it were execute Nadav and Aviv for an <i>ex post facto</i> violation?<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Wasn’t the command to not drink on the job given to Aharon after his sons’ deaths?<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>And furthermore—wouldn’t the punishment of the Dor Hamabul also qualify as<i> ex post facto</i>, if the seven mitzvos were given to Noach after the flood?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">There are two possible approaches in both cases: one, parrying the notion that the violations were <i>ex post facto</i>; the other, that what led to the imposition of capital punishment was ostensibly extra-judicial, but justified on different grounds.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">With regard to the Dor Hamabul: TB Sanhedrin details how the Seven universal (Noahide) Mitzvos were actually encoded into the text of Parshas Bereishis in certain directives given to Adam, indicating that there was some knowledge of those mitzvos in some form even if less formally codified than, say, the sin of the Etz Hada’as.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>So in that scenario, <i>ex post facto</i> is less salient: the laws did already exist.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">However, even if one grants for argument’s sake that the Seven Mitzvos were technically and chronologically Noahide, one can—as it were--“justify” the Heavenly punishment on the following grounds: the conduct of the Dor Hamabul had risen to the level of perpetual egregious criminality in areas that render one a <i>rodef</i>, as detailed in Bereishis 6:1-8 at the end of the parsha; <a href="https://www.sefaria.org/Genesis.6.13?lang=bi&aliyot=0&p2=Rashi_on_Genesis.6.13.2&lang2=bi&w2=all&lang3=en">Rashi’s explanation</a> in 6:13 that “their fate was sealed only on account of their sin of robbery” hints that there was no longer an either <i>de jure</i> or <i>de facto</i> attempt to maintain social order; G-d then read his version of a “Riot Act” with a 120-year warning, with no discernible change in behavior. (You can’t really give hasra’ah for an <i>ex post facto</i>, but we’ll leave that for now.)<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>The entire society was, as it were, terrorist.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">With regard to Nadav and Avihu, a technical argument could possibly be made that the intoxication law was given at Sinai, and based upon how the laws were transmitted as per <a href="https://www.sefaria.org/Exodus.34.32?lang=bi&aliyot=0&p2=Rashi_on_Exodus.34.32&lang2=bi">Rashi on Shemos</a> 34:32, it would be more likely than not that even if Bnei Israel didn’t learn the law, the B’nei Aharon did, as they received the lessons first.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">Even if, however, somehow that message was not yet transmitted or received, one might venture that the technical infraction which warranted the punishment wasn’t the intoxication, it was the resulting unauthorized innovation in the service, as per the text in this week’s parsha (10:2) and later on in Acharei Mos (16:1).<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>The intoxication might have been one of the factors leading to them making the decision to innovate; the (re?) commandment of the mitzvah to Aharon as the ostensible reward for his <i>demimah</i> might have also served as a wakeup call of sorts to the rest of the Kehuna (“NOW do you get it?!?”).</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">It might also be possible—and this might serve as a connection, however tenuous, between the theoretical <i>ex post facto</i> infraction of the Dor Hamabul and the B’nei Aharon—as much as the mitzvah being given to Aharon was a reward for his <i>demimah</i>, it also might have been a painful reminder of the result of failures in education and transmission.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">How?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">Aside from both the possibility that there was a command to remain sober that was ignored, and that an uncommanded initiative was certainly performed, the midrashim detail that Nadav and Avihu harbored some <a href="https://yeush.blogspot.com/2015/05/acharei-moskedoshim-why-arent-you.html">inappropriate motivations</a> in terms of their privileged status as Kohanim which had led them to reach certain unfortunate conclusions about themselves (no one was suitable enough for them to marry) and even their mentors (they wondered when Moshe and Aharon would die so they could take over).<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Something was getting lost in the transmission even beyond staying sober in the “workplace”.</span></div>
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Similarly, all sorts of transmissions were clearly lost on the Dor Hamabul; whatever relationship Adam had with G-d, and whatever was transmitted, had been lost since Dor Enosh when <a href="https://www.sefaria.org/Mishneh_Torah%2C_Foreign_Worship_and_Customs_of_the_Nations.1.1?lang=bi&with=all&lang2=en">pace Rambam</a> the first moves toward idolatry were made, until the point where there was no longer a society worth preserving.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">Going back to the original question, the speaker wondered what the message could be if one grants that <i>ex post facto</i> punishments were legitimiate in these cases.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>He opined that on occasion one has to intuit what might be right or wrong beyond having to have someone—even G-d—tell you so.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">In theory, this could be dangerous on several levels, even going back to these narratives: Nadav and Avihu’s ultimate infraction was that they <i>did</i> intuit an uncommanded action, even though their on-the-spot motivation gets a kaf zechus treatment in some quarters/sources; the “final straw” of the Dor Hamabul was that all of them thought they had<a href="https://torahmitzion.org/learn/dvar-torah-parashat-noach-repercussions-sin-robbery/"> figured out a way around being held accountable for theft</a>.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>One should remember that “your conscience” is still “<i>your</i> conscience”: the ego/id will often too easily hijack or co-opt one’s superego.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">Yet one can refine his point: if one begins to intuit a dilemma, more often than not one will—or should—be able to pinpoint what is the impetus for the dilemma; more simply and crudely put, “What might I be doing wrong here?” usually should suffice, the fact that it more often than not does not notwithstanding.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>What might have happened instead is that prior knowledge of details of what was appropriate and not had been lost due to a combination of X factors that led to that knowledge being lost; one had either become intoxicated, whether chemically or spiritually or attitudinally, like Nadav and Avihu; or the transmission of important precepts can get lost or distorted, as the Dor Enosh’s misconceptions led to the Dor Hamabul’s thorough social corruption.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">In any case, certainly nowadays, there is little no recourse to an <i>ex post facto</i> defense for transgression.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Even in situations where there ostensibly seemed to be—like these two examples—one can almost always find the proximate infraction that elicits the punishment, even capital, often without too much research.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">But maybe <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pink_Cadillac_(song)">Bruce Springsteen</a> presents the simplest formula:<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">“There's always somebody tempting somebody into doing something they know is wrong.”</span></div>
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They <i>know</i>.</div>
The Odd Coghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04631555699756710917noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6705549154171325165.post-67312207859531158252019-03-20T07:26:00.003-07:002019-03-20T19:40:47.895-07:00Purim, Progsplained (cross-post from Times Of Israel)<div class="p1" style="border: 0px; color: #333333; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin-bottom: 30px; margin-top: -8px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><i><span style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><i><span style="font-size: x-small;">[After posting this on TOI, it occurred to me that I was giving too much credit to the "P'shat wins" camp. In truth, "p'shat" in the text of Megillas Esther gives very little indication that Vashti was harassed, beyond a refusal to obey a royal request/command; without medrash, there's no hint of a #metoo scenario at all.]</span></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i><br /></i></span><br /><span style="font-size: 18px;">One of the central precepts of Purim is to render oneself so </span><a href="http://nleresources.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Drinking-on-Purim-Teacher-Final-Feb-18-2014.pdf" style="border: 0px; color: #3b8bea; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">intoxicated</a><span style="font-size: 18px;"> “until one can no longer distinguish between ‘cursed be Haman’ and “blessed be Mordechai’.”</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">More recently this intoxication seems to start a bit before the holiday: there seems to be a tendency to whitewash certain femalefactors past—<a href="https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/how-and-why-vashti-became-jewish/" style="border: 0px; color: #3b8bea; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Vashti</a>; and present—<a href="https://forward.com/fast-forward/415901/ocasio-cortez-has-no-plans-to-travel-to-israel-or-anywhere-else-right-now/" style="border: 0px; color: #3b8bea; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">AOC</a>.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">One must ask: whence the urge to rehabilitate? Why does Vashti especially conjure up the impetus to be <em style="border: 0px; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">dan lekaf zechus</em> (judge favorably?)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Queen Vashti’s status as an <a href="https://www.thelehrhaus.com/scholarship/vashti-feminist-or-foe/" style="border: 0px; color: #3b8bea; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">ostensible feminist icon</a> goes back to the First Wave of Feminism in the 19th century, attributable to Elizabeth Cady Stanton.<span class="Apple-converted-space" style="border: 0px; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span>More recently she has been elevated to honorary #metoo martyr owing to her having stood up to unwanted male attention.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The narrative in TB Megillah surrounding the #metoo incident: Achasverosh makes some clearly offensive remarks about his Queen that would qualify as harassment at the very least in any setting; Vashti certainly has the right to say no, and her retort about the King’s inability to hold his liquor as compared to her royal forebears’ stable boy (and the implied subtext that she was likely mocking his ability to perform in the royal bedchamber, especially when in his cups) certainly qualifies as a worthy riposte.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">So—taken in isolation, which is how the incident is presented in the text—the #metoo-ers might have a point.<span class="Apple-converted-space" style="border: 0px; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span>(Or, as a Facebook sparring counterpart claimed, “P’shat wins”.)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Except that: Bibliteralism is never a Jewish value.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The Purim story categorically has to occur before the Megillah was written, ergo the text has to be subservient to the oral tradition.<span class="Apple-converted-space" style="border: 0px; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span>To chain oneself to a closed basic reading of the text without the tradition does a tremendous disservice to the actual “P’shat”, both of the text itself and the actual narrative.<span class="Apple-converted-space" style="border: 0px; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span>Ergo, the Talmudic and midrashic narratives are the ones that actually “win” over the text.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">That tradition overwhelmingly presents Vashti as a scoundrel and enemy of women who didn’t have royal pedigree (here was another area where she was ahead of the curve: slut-shaming those below her “class”.)<span class="Apple-converted-space" style="border: 0px; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span>Which might explain why there’s an element of Divine poetic justice in her ultimate comeuppance as a result of her suddenly diminished beauty, as payback for her maltreatment of her female charges.<span class="Apple-converted-space" style="border: 0px; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span>Not to excuse Achashverosh for his overall maleficence (pun intended), but no one is trying to make an icon out of him.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Ultimately, Vashti is hardly a role model for either gender; her apparently justified impudence owes as much to political power dynamics as it does to ancient Levantine male privilege.<span class="Apple-converted-space" style="border: 0px; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span>Her entire relationship with her husband is bidirectionally parasitic: Vashti is trying to recover the royal status lost when Balshazar was overthrown; Achasverosh is trying to accord himself legitimacy in order to compensate for being a usurper.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">In one debate last year, Vashti was compared to a <a href="https://forward.com/opinion/395063/actually-feminists-vashti-was-the-harvey-weinstein-of-persia/" style="border: 0px; color: #3b8bea; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">female Harvey Weinstein</a>.<span class="Apple-converted-space" style="border: 0px; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span>More appropriate might be a cross between <a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2018/06/handmaids-tale-serena-joy-season-2-episode-9-recap" style="border: 0px; color: #3b8bea; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">Serena Joy</a> as “feminist” and <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/41206098?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents" style="border: 0px; color: #3b8bea; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">Roy Cohn</a> as “victim”.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Additionally, not only does an ostensibly restrictive “p’shat” reading of the Megillah that holds up Vashti as a “feminist” violate the narrative, it also egregiously shortchanges the true heroine and namesake of the story: Esther.<span class="Apple-converted-space" style="border: 0px; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span>While she may not check all the progressive and #metoo boxes in her response to being forced into the King’s harem and sexual service, her prudence and guile actually underscores her actual character and how proactive she really was.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">While she has to be prodded into taking initiative, when she does she all but issues a p’sak (the 3-day fast), and she even wants to go far as calling out the King (<i style="border: 0px; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“ish tzar ve’oyev”</i>), but is apparently redirected by an angel–she never forgets who the real enemy is, even the one she has to sleep with.<span class="Apple-converted-space" style="border: 0px; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span>She’s not exactly a “<a href="https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/daughters-of-zelophehad-midrash-and-aggadah" style="border: 0px; color: #3b8bea; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">b’nos Tzelaphchad</a>” feminist either, working within the system: she is pulls all this off while in a very public extramarital liaison (a forced one, to be sure) with a non-Jewish king–which, according to the Talmud, she uses to scare the Jews into doing <i style="border: 0px; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">more</i>fervent <em style="border: 0px; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">teshuvah</em>. Talk about “outside the box”: if Vashti was “revolutionary”, Esther was <i style="border: 0px; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">smart.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Finally, as the Megillah was written by Mordechai AND Esther (need we mention it having been named for her?), any notions of “<a href="https://forward.com/opinion/letters/395230/dont-mansplain-vashti-to-us/" style="border: 0px; color: #3b8bea; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">mansplaining</a>” are more than canceled out both by that fact and by the nearly two-century old impulse to progsplain the Purim narrative.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Which is why Rabbi Avi Shafran’s <a href="https://www.jpost.com/American-Politics/Ocasio-Cortez-isnt-Omar-or-Talib-especially-on-Israel-and-antisemitism-583509" style="border: 0px; color: #3b8bea; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">recent insistence</a> on taking AOC’s tweets as “p’shat”—especially since he clearly has no truck with progressivism—is so surprising.<span class="Apple-converted-space" style="border: 0px; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span><i style="border: 0px; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Ad d’lo yada</i> AND <i style="border: 0px; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">venahafoch hu</i>?<span class="Apple-converted-space" style="border: 0px; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span>It didn’t look like Purim Torah.<span class="Apple-converted-space" style="border: 0px; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Again, one must ask: whence the urge to rehabilitate? Why does AOC especially conjure up the impetus to be <em style="border: 0px; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">dan lekaf zechus?</em> One doesn’t even need to use Jewish issues to paint AOC as a <a href="https://www.jpost.com/American-Politics/Alexandria-Ocasio-Cortez-biggest-villain-in-Amazon-deal-crash-583910" style="border: 0px; color: #3b8bea; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">villain</a>: there are tons of other reasons.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Rabbi Shafran links to a <a href="https://hamodia.com/2019/02/26/women-valor-power-jewish-women/" style="border: 0px; color: #3b8bea; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">HaModia</a> piece in order to criticize it for lumping AOC in with the Omar-Tlaib axis of evil, but he fails to address the key charges that are clearly laid out:</span></div>
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<i style="border: 0px; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">“A week ago, after speaking with noted anti-Semite British Labor leader Jeremy Corbyn, Ocasio-Cortez gushed, “It was an honor to share such a lovely and wide-reaching conversation with you.”…Throw the Women’s March into the mix and you have a veritable smorgasbord of progressive female representation of anti-Semitism.” </span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><i style="border: 0px; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Oy lerasha, oy lishcheno </i>(woe to the evildoer, woe to the neighbor)<i style="border: 0px; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">;</i> <i style="border: 0px; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">maasim mevarerim zu es zu </i>(actions prove one another): each principle by itself should override any notion of being <i style="border: 0px; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">dan</i> AOC <i style="border: 0px; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">lekaf zchus.<span class="Apple-converted-space" style="border: 0px; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span>Kal vachomer </i>when<i style="border: 0px; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </i>both against one.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">And, for the sake of bipartisanship enough, here’s a <a href="https://forward.com/opinion/420695/when-democrats-dont-call-our-anti-semitism-in-their-party-liberal-jews/?utm_content=bufferbb0e2&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer&fbclid=IwAR3tNKsMZQbuIQIF2wWiMIPF3t030OfgFzrgLWGsYuO5tMCXbbBkMR_Wktg" style="border: 0px; color: #3b8bea; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank"><i style="border: 0px; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">progressive</i></a> who recognized the real import of of AOC’s tweet, who recognized what Rabbi Shafran refuses to:</span></div>
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<i style="border: 0px; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">“Liberal Jews aren’t concerned about criticism of Israel. We do a lot of that ourselves. We’re terrified of members of Congress using anti-Semitic tropes that have gotten our people murdered when they criticize the Jewish state.” </span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Contra Rabbi Shafran’s insistence that “It would be a regrettable irony if some of us who care deeply about Israel, in fits of zeal, carelessly pushed her in that dark direction”, some very far to his left recognize that she is already there.<span class="Apple-converted-space" style="border: 0px; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span>The open alliance with evil is obvious.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Also contra Rabbi Shafran, p’shat of the AOC tweets aren’t just what’s on the surface.<span class="Apple-converted-space" style="border: 0px; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span>In addition to her overtures to Corbyn, and open alliance with Omar and Tlaib, her unequivocal support for the Gaza “demonstrators” at the border should be further proof of AOC’s Judeomisia.<span class="Apple-converted-space" style="border: 0px; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span>Like AOC, Rep. Omar now has <a href="https://www.salon.com/2019/03/18/rep-ilhan-omar-calls-for-a-two-state-solution-to-israel-palestine-conflict-in-new-op-ed/" style="border: 0px; color: #3b8bea; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">come out</a> for the 2 state solution.<span class="Apple-converted-space" style="border: 0px; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span>Was Omar lying <a href="https://www.haaretz.com/us-news/muslim-trailblazer-ilhan-omar-admits-she-backs-bds-1.6654634" style="border: 0px; color: #3b8bea; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">then</a> or is she lying now?<span class="Apple-converted-space" style="border: 0px; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span>Why would AOC not be as prone to dissemble as Omar?<span class="Apple-converted-space" style="border: 0px; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span>As no less a terrorist than Yasser Arafat said: “I would kill for my cause; you don’t think I would lie for it?”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Rabbi Shafran concludes thus: “every person – even a “progressive” – deserves to be judged impartially.” <span class="Apple-converted-space" style="border: 0px; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span>The evidence impartially disproves his point.<span class="Apple-converted-space" style="border: 0px; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span>Further: having just read <i style="border: 0px; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Parshas Zachor,</i> one can be reminded of two of the major mistakes that King Saul made in the war with Amalek, as delineated in the <i style="border: 0px; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Haftara</i> (I Samuel 13): being <i style="border: 0px; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">merachem al hach’zarim </i>(merciful to the cruel) and <a href="https://www.law.csuohio.edu/sites/default/files/newsevents/talmudic_sources_davids_sin.pdf" style="border: 0px; color: #3b8bea; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank"><i style="border: 0px; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">al tihyeh tzadik harbeh </i></a>(do not be righteous overmuch).<span class="Apple-converted-space" style="border: 0px; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span>For those who are clearly our sworn enemies, being <i style="border: 0px; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">dan lekaf zechus </i>is clearly “Jewishly wrong, not to mention counterproductive”, but also <a href="https://www.sefaria.org/Gittin.56a.5?lang=bi&with=all&lang2=en" style="border: 0px; color: #3b8bea; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">dangerous</a>: “Rabbi Yoḥanan says: The excessive humility of Rabbi Zekharya ben Avkolas destroyed our Temple, burned our Sanctuary, and exiled us from our land.”</span></div>
The Odd Coghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04631555699756710917noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6705549154171325165.post-47840492990435637232019-01-25T09:14:00.000-08:002019-01-25T09:14:07.647-08:00Yisro—Ceilings
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<span style="font-size: small;">There are two moments in this week's parsha central to the narrative of the revelation and transmission that establish a baseline: </span><span style="font-size: small;">Torah is essentialist and binary.</span></div>
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(The much-touted “<a href="http://www.sojourngsd.org/blog/sixgenders">six genders</a>” theory proves the binary rule: the <i>androgynos </i>is forced to follow the chumras of each gender; the <i>tumtum</i>, whose gender is undetermined, is ultimately either one or the other; the <i>saris</i> is male; the <i>ailonis</i> female.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>But we digress.)</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">Yet it is that very binarism that makes it flexible towards what one might term either “Orthodox feminism” or “feminist Orthodoxy”.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">It must also be noted that the two pesukim that set up that binary—<span class="s1">כה</span> <span class="s1">תאמר</span> <span class="s1">לבית</span> <span class="s1">יעקב</span> <span class="s1">ותגיד</span> <span class="s1">לבני</span> <span class="s1">ישראל</span> on the one hand, and <span class="s1">אל־תגשו</span> <span class="s1">אל־אשה</span> on the other—are often misunderstood, sometimes deliberately, by those either trying to prove that the Torah gender definitions mandate restrictive gender roles, and/or that the Torah is invariably androcentrist and/or misogynist.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">The <span class="s1">אל־תגשו</span> <span class="s1">אל־אשה</span> issue has been oft overplayed to the point that a radical feminist notion of an androcentric Torah that excludes women: aside from this imperative ostensibly only being directed at men (never mind that <span class="s1">כה</span> <span class="s1">תאמר</span> <span class="s1">לבית</span> <span class="s1">יעקב</span> <span class="s1">ותגיד</span> <span class="s1">לבני</span> <span class="s1">ישראל</span> should indicate that not only were women included, they went first), there are actual questions raised by Tosfos in Yevamos 46a that question whether women had a <a href="https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5348363de4b0531dce75bc53/t/5864361a5016e1165d3ab990/1482962458836/05WeretheWomenatSinai.pdf">“diminished” experience</a> at Har Sinai.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Ultimately this is solved tautologically (“The women had to have immersed, because if they did not, by what method would they have entered into the Jewish People?”), but even that indicates that the conventional wisdom with regard this question is to ultimately be inclusive rather than exclusive.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">The posuk <span class="s1">כה</span> <span class="s1">תאמר</span> <span class="s1">לבית</span> <span class="s1">יעקב</span> <span class="s1">ותגיד</span> <span class="s1">לבני</span> <span class="s1">ישראל</span> delineates an ostensibly invariably traditional approach to gender divisions in education, to the point that not only are separate schools mandated, but even the educational tracks are supposed to be divided; this comes into play most often in discussions regarding women learning Gemara.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Without going too far into the controversy that <a href="https://www.jewishlinknj.com/features/9326-re-evaluating-talmud-torah-for-women">persists even today</a>, one work in particular by a non-feminist scholar—Shoshana Pantel Zolty’s 1993 <a href="https://www.amazon.com/All-Your-Children-Shall-Learned/dp/B002ADQCRA">“And All Your Children Shall be Learned: Women and the Study of Torah in Jewish Law and History”</a>—provides ample historical evidence that if there was ever a “ban” on women studying Torah sheba’al peh, it was observed much more in the breach, and for so long that the truly “modern”/“innovative”, less “traditional” approach might be the more recent attempts to ban it (and the <a href="http://yeush.blogspot.com/2008/12/vayishlach-tznius-ii-of-iii.html">successful bans in Chassidic circle</a>s).</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">The other distortion comes from the notion that a “curse”—in this case, the curses of Eve—are ipso facto directives, and attempts to alleviate them flaunt Divine will.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>One wonders whether one should note that it was the Catholic Church that mandated that women receive no pain relief during childbirth until 1949 owing to Genesis 3:16 if one wants to consider how Jewish this notion is; either way, as TB AZ 22b notes, ma’amad Har Sinai (hence the connection to this weeks parsha) alleviated some of the more pervasive <span class="s1">זוהמא</span> (or “moral contamination”), which should indicate for propitious conditions for working towards alleviating her curses.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">The irony of quoting Rav Soloveichik on this issue must be noted, as he was clearly uncompromising on certain issues regarding the metaphysical feminine; referring to metaphysical chazakot regarding women, and specifically “<i><a href="http://yeush.blogspot.com/2008/09/ki-tetzemarriage-and-divorce.html">tav lemetav tan du milemetav armelu</a></i>”, the <a href="https://static1.squarespace.com/static/54694fa6e4b0eaec4530f99d/t/54ca97e5e4b058a49fabebba/1422563301306/Rosenack+-+Berkovitz+on+modernity.pdf">Rav asserted</a> that questioning that “metaphysical curses rooted in feminine personality; this is not a psychological fact, it is an existential fact” render one an apostate; yet it also must be noted that he famously taught Talmud to women, which still causes no end of controversy even today.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Regarding the metaphysical “<i>tav lemetav tan du milemetav armelu</i>”, beyond the question of whether a woman actually would rather want to actually either remain with “trouble” rather than be alone, it would seem that certain mekoros argue against the ontology of this interpretation, specifically (but not limited to): in an individual case, the Mishnah on TB Kesuvos 77a that delineates where a man who proves impossible to physically live with is compelled to grant a get, and what some call the “shidduch crisis gemara” on Kesuvos 82b, where women en masse revised to marry until the general terms of the kesuva were altered so that wives and there families received more equitable distributions and so husband’s families couldn’t hide the attached assets. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="https://library.yctorah.org/files/2016/09/Tav-Lemeitav-Tan-Du-Mi-Lemeitav-Armalu-An-Analysis-of-the-Presumption.pdf">Additionally</a>, the statement itself appears five times in the Talmud, expanding the parameters of its definition and application enough from within the halachic system that “more recent responsa reflect a change in the deterministic approach and construe it more flexibly. They demonstrate a venue to apply the law differently to changing perceptions and social norms.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">However, ironic as it may remain, one can encapsulate the approach towards Sinaitic binarism by paraphrasing what the Rav said about halacha: it’s not a ceiling, but a floor.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>The relationship between binarism and women’s roles should follow TB Taanis 20b: “be flexible like a reed, and not rigid like a cedar”.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">But don’t take my word for it:<span class="Apple-converted-space"><br /></span><br />One of the best treatments of this topic is <a href="http://jewishbible.blogspot.com/2005/10/ten-curses-of-eve-unpublishable.html">Berel Lerner’s "The Ten Curses of Eve (an unpublishable article on women in Judaism)"</a>; he explains: <i>“</i>Non-Orthodox publications refused to print it unless I made it more stringently critical of Orthodoxy, while Orthodox publications found it too hot to handle. Since I remained unwilling to change its conclusions to make it more congenial to the views of various editors, it remains unpublished<i>.</i>”</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">And his conclusion encapsulates the issues better than most:</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><i>“[A]lert and thoughtful students of traditional texts [] are bound to discover that </i><b><i>the notion that</i></b><i> </i><b><i>the roles of women in Jewish life are equal in dignity and importance to those of men is an essentially modern notion formulated in response to modern concerns and conditions</i></b><i>…One might say that full respect for the role of women is a truth of the Torah which has remained hidden from the eyes of earlier generations, waiting for us to be its discoverers. However, we cannot pretend that those earlier generations had already made this discovery. That would be a fabrication of history and a sin against intellectual honesty.”</i></span></div>
The Odd Coghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04631555699756710917noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6705549154171325165.post-23506595789021793502019-01-18T05:19:00.000-08:002019-01-23T16:30:37.556-08:00Beshalach—Sorry Not Sorry<style type="text/css">
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">In the previous two parshiyos, the question arises regarding Pharaoh’s ultimate responsibility for his actions owing to G-d “hardening his heart” repeatedly from the sixth plague on, after his repeated displays of instransigence of his own free will.</span><span class="Apple-converted-space" style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">Rabbi Shmuel Goldin in his treatment of the question in Parshas Va’era lists several commentators who discuss and delineate how and why this ostensible Divine interference with “free will” did or did not violate the principle of </span><i style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">bechira</i><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">. </span><span class="Apple-converted-space" style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"> </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">Then Rabbi Goldin takes it one step further: based upon the Maimonidean principle that Heaven will occasionally make it very difficult if not impossible for an offender to repent.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Rabbi Goldin addresses two specific issues: the first, that there are seem sins that are so grievously injurious that the notion that one can repent for them will is well-nigh offensive; the Pharaonic racist enslavement and genocide would qualify as one of those sins.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>(To provide a crude yet illustrative analogy, in his novel “Cat’s Cradle”, Kurt Vonnegut observes one of his characters—a Nazi doctor who committed innumerable atrocities during the war who now saves lives—who might approach evening the ledgers after about three millennia practicing conventional medicine.)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">Rabbi Goldin also wants to draw a distinction between what he sees as the Christian notion that everything is forgivable.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">One might want to add three additional dimensions to this discussion. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<li class="li1"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"><span class="s1"></span>The first expands upon the Pharaonic and Egyptian “hardheartedness”, and that, even leaving aside Rabbi Goldin’s salient notion that there are unforgivable things, more often than not the associated attempted<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>“repentance” fall far short at best, or later proves to have been completely insincere in its face at worst. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></li>
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<li class="li1"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"><span class="s1"></span>The second adds a loosely analogous “hate-crime” dimension, even if an ostensibly Judeocentric one: when it comes to crimes against the Jews, and that the otherwise ostensibly well-behaved forfeit any claim to righteousness, and can be accounted with the truly wicked based solely on their expressed intransigent Judeophobia, on a personal but especially on a national level.</span></li>
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<li class="li1"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"><span class="s1"></span>The third, unfortunately, points to a trend within certain frum circles where an inappropriately expansive definition of teshuva and mechila has been adopted and insisted upon as a, if not the, default Jewish position regarding certain offenses and offenders.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>The distortion might owe more to pop psychology than the aforementioned Christian notions of forgiveness; it finds considerable favor in therapeutic circles where the lines between therapy and teshuva get blurred.</span></li>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">The first explains why the theme of “hard-heartedness” more conceptually central to the parshiyot in Sefer Shemot that precede Beshalach—especially Va’era, where one first views the shift between Pharaoh hardening his heart first without, and then with, Divine “assistance”—actually not only in central to the events at the Red Sea, but finally ties together the entire Egyptian attitude. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">In essence, Pharaoh, his court and subjects cancel whatever teshuva they might have done at the time of <i>makkas bechoros </i>when they completely reconsider having set the slaves free (or, possibly, even having only given them a three-day furlough).<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>The favorable attitude they had toward the Hebrews referred to during the period between choshech and <i>makkas bechoros</i>; their fear after <i>makkas bechoros </i>“we are all dead”—any self-reflection and regret is now erased: the chase to the Sea is on.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>In our day and age, one can identify this kind of insincere or even completely false repentance with individuals like Dr. Lara (rhymes with Phara) Kollab, the Touro graduate who showed her gross ingratitude in a series of revealed antisemitic tweets and, when caught, issued a fauxpology blaming her tirade on the “oppression of Palestinians”.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">The second point explains how theoretically G-d-fearing, well-meaning people can harbor the word Judeocidal impulses even while ostensibly exhibiting righteousness: consider how the Egyptians labeled as “G-d-fearing” during the plague of <i>barad </i>who saved their livestock are identified as the same Egyptians comprising the garrison chasing the Jews into the sea.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>This should serve as a contemporary analog to public figures like Jimmy Carter and Louis Farrakhan, who are lauded for their charitable efforts at the same time they issue repeated antisemitic platitudes.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>A “good” antisemite may be an even worse antisemite.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">The third element—the aforementioned trend within certain frum circles to inappropriately expand definitions of <i>teshuva</i> and <i>mechila</i>—describes issues different from national enemies: rather, it can be seen particularly in the insistence that miscreants like sex offenders and domestic abusers are too often given the benefit of religious doubts because “anyone can do teshuva”.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>As Rabbi Goldin points out, this notion is a misnomer, but it hasn’t stopped stop some from insisting upon the opposite notion bordering on an ikkar emunah.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">One example might be a facebook thread on the wall of a very prominent <i>shadchanis</i> discussing harassment and even date rapes unexpectedly occurring in shidduch settings; some commenters insisted that even a rapist can’t be turned in for his crime if he has done teshuva. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">Another example might be a frum psychologist insisting that an abuser doing teshuva for wife beating can be trusted to get married again because “anyone can do teshuva”, and that would qualify as an indicator for rehabilitative success<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>(in fact, if an abuser wanted to truly repent, he should express the willingness to consign himself to celibacy and release his victim unreservedly from the marriage to find safety elsewhere).<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">Yet another example might involve a discussion about Amnon ostensibly doing teshuva for the rape of his sister Tamar by fasting and never leaving the bes medrash for the last two years of his life before Avshalom kills him as revenge.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Some use this medrash as a paradigm of how one can repent even the worst crime; a closer examination of the narrative might indicate how this kind of outward “repentance” usually is somewhere between woefully incompletely and grossly insincere.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>One thing one might note is that the medrash details Amnon’s outward displays of piety, but it never says he apologizes or makes restitution to his sister, who becomes a recluse as a result of the assault.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">In effect the real takeaway, then, is that it is more likely that expressions of regret and penitence for certain gross iniquities can be legitimately responded to with even extreme skepticism.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">As a final recent example of how this works (or doesn’t), one can view the example of a prominent Rav trying to use Bernie Madoff’s expressions of regret at his sentencing as <a href="https://www.torahmusings.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/new-york-rabbi-shafran-i-errored-in-bernie-sully-article-i-apologize">“help[ing] people understand eternal Jewish truths”.</a><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Even as the Rav was removing his piece because the intense backlash made him consider that he might have <a href="https://www.jta.org/2009/04/06/culture/madoff-essay-blasted-shafran-apologizes">“chose[n] unsuitable examples for the concepts [he] sought to impart”</a>, Madoff, like Pharaoh, ended any penitential pretense in a later jailhouse interview: </span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"><a href="https://www.cnbc.com/id/37551164">“**** my victims.”</a></span><br />
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<br />The Odd Coghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04631555699756710917noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6705549154171325165.post-68330823947698704702019-01-11T08:36:00.003-08:002019-01-11T11:16:11.359-08:00Bo—Need To Know<style type="text/css">
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<span style="font-size: small;">Moshe Rabbeinu makes an executive decision.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">As explained in TB Brachos 4a, Moshe tells Pharaoh and his court that the Plague of the First Born will strike “kachatzos”—as “on or about midnight”, loosely translated—in slight contradistinction to G-d’s directive, that the plague would strike “bachatzos”, or “at midnight”, exactly. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>The implication in the Talmudic text is that Moshe’s editing received a Divine imprimatur: if Pharaoh’s astrologers had miscalculated and it would have appeared that the plague had not occurred at midnight, they would have considered it an opening to discredit the Divine provenance of the plague.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">In theory, one might question how likely that scenario was.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Consider that Egypt was already on edge; the country had all but been destroyed by the previous nine plagues, the nation seemed to be siding with the Jews against Pharaoh and the court [see 11:3], and the court itself had issues with the Pharaonic stance [10:7]: would a slight astronomic miscalculation truly have any appreciably significant effect on the Egyptian reaction to the result of Makkas Bechoros, where <span class="s1">אֵ֣ין</span> <span class="s1">בַּ֔יִת</span> <span class="s1">אֲשֶׁ֥ר</span> <span class="s1">אֵֽין־שָׁ֖ם</span> <span class="s1">מֵֽת</span>, and the whole population thought <span class="s1">כֻּלָּ֥נוּ</span> <span class="s1">מֵתִֽים</span>?<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>If the astrologers had tried to make an issue of it, would anyone have paid attention?</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">Moshe’s “edit” might have been a case of <span style="background-color: #e9e9e7; text-align: right;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">עת לעשות לה׳ הפרו תורתך :</span></span> if Moshe had given Pharaoh's astrologers even the slightest opening at that moment, it might have even just slightly diminished the “unity” that prevailed among the Egyptians after Makkas Bechoros—<span class="s1">כֻּלָּ֥נוּ</span> <span class="s1">מֵתִֽים</span> as the Egyptian bizarro <span class="s1">כְּאִישׁ</span> <span class="s1">אֶחָד</span> <span class="s1">בְּלֵב</span> <span class="s1">אֶחָד</span> —from Pharaoh on down to even the other non-Hebrew slaves who were almost as Hebrephobic as their Egyptian masters.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Moshe took into account what he saw as entrenched local cultural tendencies, and predicting the that the real Kiddush Hashem would resulted from the effect of the plague, he didn’t want to leave open the possibility of that moment being diminished even slightly. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Hence the edit, which, pace the midrashim, seems to have been approved after the fact at least.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">This incident may have educational implications, with support both Scriptual and post-Scriptural: the Jews at Har Sinai had the Revelation on a personal level “adjusted”—as it were—based upon each individual’s ability to receive and withstand the message.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Yet, prior to that, at <i><a href="https://projectgenesis.org/24770/a-maidservant-by-the-sea/">krias yam suf, </a></i>it was said that “a maidservant saw at the sea what Yeshayah (Isaiah) and Yechezkel (Ezekiel) did not see.”<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Ostensibly an insistence on the doctrinal can detract from the experiential.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>This is true: but only up to the point that said doctrinal isn’t subverted, only that it isn’t necessarily presented all at once.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">[Consider, even, the Talmudic narrative surrounding the <a href="https://www.ou.org/holidays/months/translation-seventy/">Ptolmaic translation</a> (TB Megilla 9a), where G-d performed a miracle and allowed for simultaneous translation even with ostensible departures from p’shat; but the anniversary of the date—8 Tevet—was at one time considered a day of national mourning and fasting.]</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">One attempt to explain this—which, to this authors mind, ultimately further complicated the matter because, even though that author made the claim up front that “<a href="https://hevria.com/tzvi/lie-bt-yeshiva/">you’re lied to in Baal Teshuva Yeshiva</a>”, he couldn’t seem to decide whether to condemn or condone the approach—did say this, which might encapsulate the entire educational conundrum:</span></div>
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<i><span style="font-size: small;">“If the Yeshiva is devoted to the delicate art of forming real Jews, the Rabbi’s answer must be complicated…Truth is ineffable and simple, and therefore cannot be communicated, even to the perhaps paltry extent the Rabbi has attained it.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>The individual is complex, communicates only through fragmented words, and is looking for an answer.”</span></i></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><i></i><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">In other words, The Message might be received if presented in a more subtle form; and not only will it not detract from the Message, it might enhance it.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">That said, there are some approaches that should definitely be considered out of bounds. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Aside from the aforementioned piece—which apparently just describes the philosophical and educational conundra, but doesn’t delve into what some have described as <a href="http://offthederech.blogspot.com/2005/11/are-you-in-bt-yeshiva.html">marketing ploys</a>—there are cases where the philosophy itself is twisted, and the justified to “make people frum”.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">But <a href="https://cross-currents.com/2007/09/10/bible-codes-announcement/">don’t take my word for it</a>:</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><i>“The way Prof. Barry Simon and I see it is that nine years ago </i>[1998]<i> we saw the </i>[Torah]<i> Codes as probably without merit, and possibly dangerous.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Things have changed. Today </i>[2007]<i> we regard them as definitely without merit, and certainly dangerous to the Torah community…We understand the methodology of the experimenters much better. We’ve had an opportunity to subject the phenomenon to other tests, including one agreed upon in advance by both sides. We’ve seen some of the problems generated by people coming to believe that this is really a part of Torah.”</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">In the end, one just has to make sure that what one presents as Torah—or even as part of Torah—really is a part of Torah.</span></div>
The Odd Coghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04631555699756710917noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6705549154171325165.post-45174778677211541322018-12-28T10:19:00.002-08:002018-12-28T10:52:24.261-08:00Shemos—Minority Report<style type="text/css">
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<span style="font-size: small;">“<i>Even in Egypt, the Pharaohs</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><i>Had to import Hebrew braceros</i>”</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">—Tom Lehrer</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">Themes and memes from Exodus have been circulating cyberspace throughout the current ostensible immigration crisis, and particularly since the Honduran caravan made its way north.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">A closer look at how the Hebrews became Egypt’s most prominent minority and then Egypt’s most prominent victim of discrimination should give the lie to most if not all attempted analogs between the Biblical Exodus and the Honduran one in particular, and the entire ultimate open borders project more generally.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">The Pharaoh of Yosef wasn’t Egyptian—he was Hykso, a northern minority that had conquered Egypt and was ruling the majority Egyptian population.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>After Yosef’s revelation to his brothers, the royal court invited Yosef to bring his entire family, and he negotiated settling them in an area apart from the population—in Goshen.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">On one hand, this might have presented an obstacle, as Yosef feared his brothers would have been drafted, but on the other, proved not to be when Yosef raised the specter of religious oppression vis a vis shepherding, so as a fellow minority, Pharaoh proved to be more than accommodating.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>In a certain sense, Pharaoh might have been setting the Hebrews as a lightning rod, another minority to take pressure off of the Hyksos, as both he and Yosef were willing to give some credence to the <a href="https://yeush.blogspot.com/2008/12/miketzchanuka-ethnic-tension.html">racist and segregationist mentality</a> in Egypt. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">(In fact, while as part of the repeated admonishment to love the get because we were strangers in Egypt, we are commended to not “hate the Egyptian” to the point that they are allowed in as gerim after a three-generation vet: the Torah almost seems to be giving credence to the notion that an attitude adjustment toward foreigners is a long, involved process that doesn’t happen overnight.)</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">Yet when <a href="https://yeush.blogspot.com/2009/01/vayigash-states-of-emergency.html">Yosef executes his command economy</a>, he takes steps to equalize the population (thought admittedly in a theoretically Hebrecentric manner—he legislates national circumcision).<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Despite the fact that his radical socialist economy actually SAVES people (as opposed to what would happened in other socialist economies), the population isn’t all that grateful when push comes to shove and are able to reassert themselves as majority rulers and, having driven out the Hyksos, institute a “Blame the Jews” policy first. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">(Interestingly, as part of the justification for this policy—</span><span style="background-color: #fbfbfa; font-family: "frank ruehl libre" , "hebrew text font" , , "crimson text" , "georgia" , serif; font-size: 18px; text-align: justify;">ועלה מן הארץ</span><span style="font-size: small;">—the Egyptians never seem to consider actually expelling the Hebrews; they’d rather enslave them, kill the males, and take their women.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>(The Egyptian tendency to doublespeak as delineated in Rashi ad loc was a cultural tendency: just as examples of how the Egyptians used “fake news” as official policy, one need only note the <a href="http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2015/07/hatshepsut-female-king-egypt-wore-fake-beard/">erasure of Hatshepsut</a> from all public historical records, and the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merneptah_Stele">Merneptah stele</a>, which may have been the first instance of Exodus denial.))</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">This, towards a population that: was already there, having been invited and vetted as legal immigrants; and<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>had literally saved the country and its entire population, as opposed to taking it over and forcing their way of life upon it; Goshen proved that.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>One also should remember that Yosef was actually ASKED by the population to do everything he did before he put it into policy: he was offered even more draconian terms than he eventually imposed, and he avoided outright slavery; plus, his moves applied equally to everyone.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>He has populations change neighborhoods, but he doesn’t deport anyone, and he doesn’t import anyone.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">If one were to make an analog between the Exodus and the current migrant crisis, it wouldn’t be having populations moving to foreign lands en masse: it would, instead, be displaced populations returning to their own homelands.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">“You were <i>gerim</i> in Egypt”: remember how you were invited and how you negotiated your interaction with the local culture, and respected it even as you distanced yourself from it as you found it in complete contradistinction to your way of life. The <i>gerim</i> you are going to vet are going to have submitted themselves to the same level of vetting and are actually going to adjust to YOUR way of life, not demand to impose theirs while maintain an equal or even favored status.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-converted-space">And that's just on <i>religious</i> terms. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-converted-space">The ultimate folly of the <i>ger</i>-as-immigrant analog is even simpler: just as one wouldn't expect that today's immigrants subject themselves to Torah laws regarding <i>gerus </i>in formulating immigration policy, one should certainly not expect that credence is given to the notion that open borders immigration has the force of Biblical imprimatur.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-converted-space">It doesn't.</span></span><br />
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<br />The Odd Coghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04631555699756710917noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6705549154171325165.post-48199891040091735422018-12-21T12:10:00.002-08:002018-12-21T12:13:42.885-08:00Vayechi—Not Just The Chairman<style type="text/css">
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<span style="font-size: small;">Last week’s parsha features the confrontation between Yehuda and Yosef that illustrates competing concepts of ideal leadership for klal yisrael.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>The Rav explains how the Yehuda model has to win out in the end, because Yehuda exemplifies gevura, and Yosef exemplifies chesed, and in situation that require not retreat but advance, gevura must trump chewed; the Rav notes that Yosef realized this at that moment that he decided to finally reveal himself to his brothers.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">(Note that even when Yosef institutes increasingly draconian emergency economic measures, the dialogue between him and the Egyptian populace indicates that they seemed to ask him first; he was waiting for them to give him permission to impose.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Yehuda, in contrast, couches his “J’accuse” in diplomatic language, but that’s about the <a href="https://yeush.blogspot.com/2017/12/vayigashdiplomatic-protocol.html">only discernible politesse</a> in the exchange.)</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">When one arrives at this weeks parsha, the question then arises as to the contrast between the ostensible leadership styles of Yehuda as juxtaposed with the other brother pretenders: Reuven certainly as the bechor, but possibly also Shimon and Levi.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>The questions become more trenchant when one realizes that Reuven and his descendants are left with no real unique, discernible role among the bnei Leah: Shimon—pace Rashi on 49:7—became educators, and some say military men; Levi gave rise to the entire Preistly class; Yehuda, as noted, assumed the Kingship; even Yissachar and Zevulun had specifically roles carved out for them.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">What was the nature of Reuven’s <i>pachaz</i>—“instability”—that made Yaakov assume he was unfit for any public role?<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>49:4 refers back to the incident of 35:22, Reuven “upsetting his father’s couch” because he thought his mother was getting short shrift.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Even when TB Shabbat 55b goes out of its way to ensure that it is known that no sin was committed, the entire incident is hardly an endorsement of Reuven’s action if one deigns to take a closer look.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">First is the simple question of boundaries: having anything to do with what goes on in one’s parent’s bedroom.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>The Gemara says that Reuven was actually sickened by the notion of what he might do, which may indicate that along with his impulsiveness, there was an ick factor the entire time that he was not unaware of.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">Next is the fact that the Gemara note that the Shechina would precede Yaakov into whichever one of his respective wives’ tent he was to lodge that evening, so Reuven’s quarrel with his father turned out to be a quarrel with Heaven (presumably Leah wasn’t unaware of this, which may explain why there’s no protest from her, especially given her more proactive propensities as illustrated both how she married Yaakov and the <i>duda’im</i> narrative). <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">Additionally—should one attempt to make an analog between Reuven argument with G-d as mimicking his great-grandfather vis-a-vis Sodom—the analog fall flat immediately when one remembers that Avraham was invited by G-d to argue on behalf of the Five Towns, and the argument itself was almost as if G-d was giving them Sixth Amendment rights; all Reuven did was violate his father’s Fourth Amendment rights.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">Most crucially, however—and this might encapsulate Yaakov’s assessment—is that Reuven really never comes to terms with not taking everything personally.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Witness what might be his finest moment: stopping the impending slaughter of Yosef, having him thrown in the pit to play for time.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Except that: what does Reuven do once the immediate crisis is averted?<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>He runs off to engage in sackcloth and fasting for his offenses in the Bilhah matter, and in the meantime Yehuda moves into the power vacuum and Yosef is sold.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">As the Rav explains, the teshuva at that moment was Reuven realizing that his impetuousness led the rest of the brothers to be disdainful of Yaakov’s authority and parental/paternal prerogatives, and the internecine hatred towards Yosef was the result.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Problem was, the crisis was still ongoing, and Reuven put his own personal spiritual dilemma ahead of the alleviating the crisis at hand, even as he had begun to blunt the worst case scenario.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Reuven may have still been trying to tenuously hold on to his position and his bechora by not making a public admission of his lapses, so as to not imperil his ostensible position. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">Yehuda is willing to do what Reuven isn’t: both when he admits his infractions with Tamar in public, and when he takes on the responsibility for Yosef that Reuven fails to when he "offers" <i>his</i> own sons as collateral.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>As Eli Lebowicz explains:<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><i>When Yehuda promises to Yaakov he’ll protect Binyamin, he’s coming from a different perspective than his brother Reuven is, who Yaakov brushes off when Reuven tries to guarantee it. After Yosef’s sold, Yehuda has two of his own sons die, and having gone through that experience, now he’s appealing to Yaakov as a father who can actually empathize with what he’s going through, having lost children of his own.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">Further highlighting Reuven’s demotion is Yaakov’s admonition of Shimon and Levi: Yaakov has a problem with what they did, but doesn’t, as it were, demote them the way he does Reuven.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">Why?</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">The action at Shechem wasn’t an issue of personal aggrandizement for either of them; it was a calculated preemption in defense of the entire family’s honor, rather than internecine squabble about their place of privilege in the ostensible family hierarchy.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Neither one was attempting to maintain a personal privilege.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Reuven might have done just that in the Bilhah incident, which, interestingly occurs <i>after</i> Shechem, indicating that Reuven learned the wrong lessons, and that Shimon and Levi’s action did <i>not </i>undermine their father’s authority, despite Yaakov’s protestations of “<i>achartem osi</i>”.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">As<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>a result Yaakov’s “curse” that Shimon and Levi get split up actually is more than a blessing in disguise, for them AND for the rest of klal yisrael. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>In addition to the aforementioned roles ascribed to Shimon and Levi, note that actually was given what was originally supposed to be the province of the <i>bechorim (</i>not Reuven<i> per se,</i> but certainly loosely analogous) after the <i>chet haegel,</i> when they carried out ostensibly extrajudicial executions ; unlike Reuven,<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>who proved to be too tied both to himself and his immediate family and the ostensible privileges it would’ve conferred, Devarim 33:9 notes vis a vis Levi <span class="s1">הָאֹמֵ֞ר</span> <span class="s1">לְאָבִ֤יו</span> <span class="s1">וּלְאִמּוֹ֙</span> <span class="s1">לֹ֣א</span> <span class="s1">רְאִיתִ֔יו</span> <span class="s1">וְאֶת־אֶחָיו֙</span> <span class="s1">לֹ֣א</span> <span class="s1">הִכִּ֔יר</span> <span class="s1">וְאֶת־בנו</span> [<span class="s1">בָּנָ֖יו</span>] <span class="s1">לֹ֣א</span> <span class="s1">יָדָ֑ע</span> <span class="s1">כִּ֤י</span> <span class="s1">שָֽׁמְרוּ֙</span> <span class="s1">אִמְרָתֶ֔ךָ</span> <span class="s1">וּבְרִֽיתְךָ֖</span> <span class="s1">יִנְצֹֽרוּ׃</span><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">Finally, Yehuda, by proving that he knew where and when to face what was and wasn’t necessarily a priority; he distinguished himself from Reuven, who showed that even when he was doing teshuva, he couldn’t abandon that even when the situation called for it, and when he tried to be helpful, it could only go so far.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">As Sefer Bereishis concludes with the ostensible short-term resolution of the heated fraternal conflicts between Yaakov’s children, there might be a few small temporary takeaways:<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">*If one feels compelled to act impetuously on the basis of righteous indignation—one night want to reconsider;</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">*If one thinks one’s impetuous act of righteous indignation is justified in defense another’s honor—one might want to make sure the act is not truly about one’s own personal honor;</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">*One might actually be born to great things, but one still has to (re-)earn that privilege and prove that one belongs in an exalted position;</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">*Finally—one must be able to truly recognize the stakes and prioritize accordingly, even if and/or especially at one’s own personal expense.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
<br />The Odd Coghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04631555699756710917noreply@blogger.com0