Ben, Jerry, and Julia: The Last Sadductions

(crosspost from Times of Israel)

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.

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.  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.

Bennett Cohen and Jerry Greenfield have long incorporated a strain of progressive activism into their iconic ice cream product; when their company was bought out by Unilever.  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”.   

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 current chairman of the board has written glowingly about Hamas and Hezbollah; and that the company would have pulled out of Israel entirely but was prevented from doing so by their corporate overlords at Unilever.  

Following an international backlash of unexpected intensity that galvanized most segments of the Jewish community save for the usual pockets of doctrinaire “Jewish” progressives, Messrs. Cohen and Greenfield took to the pages of the New York Times 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 antisemitic bigots both inside and outside their company.  

This time, fewer people are buying their explanations, just as fewer people are going to buying and stocking their ice cream.

In a similar vein, the designer Julia Haart—formerly known as Rebbetzin Talia Hendler, a popular Orthodox Jewish educator—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.   In other words, her success and striving are all about her leaving Orthodoxy.

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  Orthodox community for a multitude of offenses, also in part due to the fact that she seemed to be engaging in the crudest sort of ethnic stereotyping 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 fashion writer from Glamour magazine with no otherwise obvious connection to Orthodox Judaism.

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.  And while those countering with #myorthodoxlife hashtags also provide at least a decent counterargument to Haart’s freikeit, 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.  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.

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  abandonment of almost any social boundaries to he point that she nearly forfeits her fitness as a parent.

It has been noticed Haart is seriously dissembling about her own former background 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 “with it” 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.  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.

But it is not only her revisionist personal history that impact said credibility.  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.  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.  Essentially, she prosletyzes hard for freikeit as much as she might have done once upon a time for frumkeit: either they have to be right or she has to be, and to prove her own rectitude, she has to drag everyone else along.  Meanwhile, even other ex-Orthodox have noticed how her approach is more than misleading.

Especially since it becomes apparent in many scenes during the show that Haart’s parenting and mentoring style becomes more cringeworthy than her fashion.  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.  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.

The reaction to these miscreants should be fierce and unyielding.  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.   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.   

It is often asked why the pig  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.   This porcine paradigm provides a useful template for indelibly branding them as the modern Sadducees they are.

Bar Kamtza deserved it

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.

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. 

For one thing, Bar Kamtza clearly was a Bad Jew (never mind not a nice guy).  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?  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.

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.  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).

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.”  Does anyone in chinuch teach that humility was the cause of the Churban?   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?  

There’s another interesting hint in the narrative: “Bar Kamtza 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..”  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 Bar Kamtza?

Korach and Bilaam: Critical Theorists, Intersectional Progressives…and One-Percenters

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.

Critical theorist and progressive attacks on Jews and Judaism go all the way back to the time of Moshe Rabbeinu.  In Korach, the parsha’s namesake launches his attack from within; in this week’s parsha, Balak, Bilaam attacks from without.

It has been posited in these pages 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.

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.  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 after the earth opens up and swallows him, so many still accuse Moses of having assassinated Korach that G-d inflicts a deadly plague upon the people.

(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”.)

It is in this vein that the same ostensible spiritual leader 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.  Like Korach, this spiritual leader starts out with a proclamation of “kulam kedoshim”—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.  (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.)

Korach isn’t hiding behind an “all lives matter” theology—adderabba: 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. 

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.  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.    Korach and Bilaam used spirituality—an ostensibly Jewish, if distorted, kind—to antagonize Jews, as evidenced by current groups like JVP and INN.  Bilaam took it a step further by using his ”open borders” philosophy to unite disparate factions against all Jews.

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.   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”.

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;  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.   

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.   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.

Another commonality: Korach and Bilaam—men of the people—were one-percenters.

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.  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.

Bilaam’s riches aren’t as directly spelled out in the literature, but his status as the 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.   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”].   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.  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.)

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”.  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”.]  

Nothing says critical theorist more than using literally G-d given gifts to bring His house down in service of a personal agenda.  

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”).

And nothing says progressive more than one-percenters masquerading as men of the people.