A young boy is called up to his teacher’s desk in a yeshiva grade school.

“Stay after class, Shmuley. I want to talk to you.”

Shmuley stays, frightened that he has done something wrong and his teacher will punish him. Once the other boys have gone, his teacher – a rabbi – places Shmuley on his lap and uses his tiny, warm body to stroke his erection. When the rabbi is finished pleasuring himself, he tells Shmuley to leave. “But you be quiet. You don’t tell anyone what we did. It’s lashon hara, and it will hurt you and hurt your parents.”

Shmuley leaves, frightened and confused.

Later, after the fifth molestation or the fiftieth, after months or years have passed, Shmuley tells his parents.

His parents tell the school’s head rabbi, who responds by denying the boy’s report. He sternly warns the parents not to “talk lashon hara” (gossip) about Shmuley's teacher or about the yeshiva.

This is not the first time the yeshiva head has heard allegations about Rabbi X, and he knows how to effectively respond.

“It is lashon hara to do so,” the yeshiva head says. “And it will only hurt you.” Your other children will have difficulty finding marriage partners, the rabbi says, and Shmuley – well, Shmuley will be “damaged goods” – no one, except a girl who is also very damaged, will ever marry him. This is far from an idle threat in a community that thrives on arranged marriages and rabbinic control.

The parents leave, frustrated and frightened. Their eight-year-old son is now “damaged goods.” They approach another rabbi, powerful in their community, and ask his advice.

“Your son is a minor. his testimony would not be accepted in beis din (religious court). It is his word against Rabbi X – and Rabbi X is a very well regarded teacher. And, from what you tell me, even if what Shmuley said is true – and I doubt that – no violation of Torah law took place. Shmuley was not violated.

“So, my advice to you – my legal judgement, in fact – is to listen to what the head of the yeshiva told you. Do not speak lashon hara against him, or against his school – and most certainly, not against Rabbi X.”

The parents go to another important community rabbi and get a very similar answer.

Without community support to back them, and with the very real prospect of “destroying” their children’s lives by branding them “damaged goods,” the parents stay silent.

Shmuley isn’t given counseling because the stigma, if revealed, would be too great. The family lives with this terrible secret, an elephant always in the room but never spoken of, the tarnished Elijah’s Cup of every meal, every celebration, every enjoyment they will ever have. Rabbi X continues to abuse young victims from his desk in the yeshiva, protected by a presumption of innocence belied by the facts, by the silence of Shmuley’s family – and by a Jewish law.

This nightmare scenario has allegedly been repeated multiple times in Brooklyn, Monsey, Bnei Brak, and other ultra-Orthodox communities worldwide. How did this happen? How did a law meant to protect people from gossip become a club used by rabbis to beat defenseless children and their families into submission?

There is a long answer and a short answer to that question, and both can be summed up in same three words: The Chofetz Chaim.

Rabbi Yisrael Meir Kagan is the iconic figure of today’s ultra-Orthodox Judaism. Kagan wrote many books on Jewish law in his long life. The first – and what may in retrospect prove to be his most controversial – was the Chofetz Chaim, a compendium of the laws of lashon hara.

Nothing that Kagan wrote in Chofetz Chaim was really new. What Kagan did – to the dismay of a few prescient rabbis – was compile laws scattered is disparate sections of the Talmud and in codes of Jewish law, and publish them for the first time as an organic whole with his commentary woven in. Kagan wanted his “little book” to be studied by the masses. He lived his entire long life firmly believing the messiah was literally coming any minute. Legend has it that at one point, he went into training for the “event,” running the stairs in his home to keep his aging body in shape for the blessed day. He thought the study of these laws would speed the messiah’s coming.

But Kagan’s book did bring these disparate laws out of the shadows and into the spotlight of Orthodox observance. And that, by and large, has been a bad thing.

Kagan’s idealism surpassed his realism. And, because Kagan’s book contained no dissenting opinions, that idealism became the baseline Jews were expected to follow – without nuance, without shades of gray, without real compensation for corrupt judges, rabbis, and leaders. It was Jewish law written in a vacuum but enforced in real life, law without context and without soul.

Kagan was a founder of the Agudath Israel movement, whose American branch recently campaigned against mandatory background checks for religious school teachers and employees, and would itself be linked to inaction in the face of rabbinic sexual abuse.

He urged Jews (with a few notable exceptions) to remain in Eastern Europe rather than settle in Palestine or America, and would go on to write twenty more books on Jewish law and ethics before he died in 1933 at the age of 95, in the shadow of the Holocaust that took so many of his followers and townspeople.

Kagan’s reputation as a saint survived nonetheless, and he and his books serve as totems worshipped with almost childlike veneration by ultra-Orthodoxy. He is often cited as the posek acharon, the final decisor and codifier of Jewish law, and his name and works have been preserved by the New York-based Chofetz Chaim Heritage Foundation. His books are found in almost every Orthodox home, library, shul and school – and in quite a few non-Orthodox settings, as well.

Orthodox Jews would be quick to point out that Kagan’s laws of lashon hara are misapplied by the rabbis in Shmuley’s story. Orthodox Jews are correct – the law is misapplied. But, like Kagan, what they miss is the inevitability of that misapplication, and the certitude of it.

The ultra-Orthodox community is not a democracy. It has no system of checks and balances, no ombudsman to press the case of the powerless, no campaign finance laws or transparency. It has no elections and no governance. It is a loosely joined series of potentates run by pashas dressed in black frock coats, fedoras and shtreimels, who owe allegiance to no one but themselves, and who are answerable only to God. And, as history and common sense tell us, God doesn’t often demand answers from those still here on this earth.

Until ultra-Orthodoxy adopts a fully transparent form of governance with a working system of checks and balances, laws meant to protect reputations will instead often be used to destroy lives – especially the lives of the smallest and the weakest, especially the lives of children like Shmuley.

David Berman: likes to read David Berman is the front man and only constant member in the (formerly) ever-changing lineup of Silver Jews. On albums, he is loose-lipped and brazen, throwing clichés to the wind and spouting lyrics that are brilliant, simple, and beautiful; Pitchfork Media, bastion of all that is hip, said of him “the things that flash through my mind…if I had discipline and talent, could perhaps be turned into words by David Berman.”

It’s a strange compliment, but, when dealing with Berman, one learns to wade through the sea of compliments…and the sea of weirdness. The New York Times called his debut collection of poetry, Actual Air, “one of the most highly acclaimed debuts for a poet in recent memory.” And his on-and-off sideman, Stephen Malkmus, is one of independent rock’s greatest heroes: once the singer/guitarist for the band Pavement, he’s now a highly-successful solo artist.

When the Times interviewed Berman in 2005, he made a passing reference to a new hobby: reading Torah. Now, he does it every day—partly for other reasons, but partly because the unexpected collusion that his once-arbitrary band name has brought.

This has been a busy year for the Berman and his cohorts. The band and their first Israeli national tour were the subjects of the documentary Silver Jew. And their just-released album, Lookout Mountain, Lookout Sea, is the venerable latest entry in a just-as-venerable catalogue. We recently caught up with Berman to discuss touring Israel, the new album, studying Torah, and...show tunes.

How did you decide to record your recent documentary in Israel—was there something about the country, or the time, or something else, that made that tour more videogenic? And how did you wind up touring Israel in the first place? Well Israel was the easternmost point of 45 shows we played in 2006. I had gotten with a booking agent for the first time. We talked about what I would and wouldn’t want to do. He asked me if there was one place out of the ordinary I’d like to play. I didn’t hesitate. At first I wasn’t sure if there were fans there…I found out there were. One Hasid sent a book with his sister thanking me for naming the band Silver Jews. Before he found religion, he found the Silver Jews and wanted to thank me, despite the fact that the he no longer went to concerts or listened to secular music.

When did people start asking about the "Jews" part of your band name? Jews of the “don’t make trouble” variety haven’t been a cultural force for a while. Political correctness was the topic of the day when I came up with the name. Perhaps I thought people would be forced to speak politely about the band. But really, “Jew,” it’s a beautiful word. It looks good too. The J is so unique, the e, so affable, the w, so strong. Despite all the professional show business Jews who changed their names, I’m going to make the name stick out. So if you are counterintuitive and a natural contrarian like I was in 1992, trying to be all conceptual, you might choose such a name.

Are you still studying Torah? I read it everyday but I don’t perform the mitzvot. I am some kind of sub-junior Jew-in-waiting.

What was that like for you when you started—were people instantly like, "oh, a Jewish indie band"? Only people in Britain said the word indie back then. We were duly classified as “lo-fi”. But I since we didn’t play shows, I don’t know what they thought. People would call it a Pavement side project.

Do you go through phases of writing poems and phases of writing songs, or does it all happen together? It’s never at the same time. It’s always the only thing going on. But there are long stretches where I just read.

What about the idiom of country music appeals to you—did you grow up listening to it, or is it just that particular shade of gothic Americana? I like the narrative nature. The stories. The mix of humor and despair. It’s just something I’ve always been fond of. When I was a kid I did like the pop country of that time better than the hard rock music. Here’s an example: “Somebody’s Knocking” by Terri Gibb. If you listen to that you can hear how uncountry country got in 1981. It’s weird that she won country female vocalist of the year on that.

Where did the title—and, I guess, the idea—Lookout Mountain, Lookout Sea come from? It’s a play on words for Lookout Mountain, Tennessee. “Lookout Sea” can obviously be heard as “lookout see.” I had a cornea transplant in January of 2007, and a lot of vision motifs are in the lyrics.

This new album seems like a weird progression in several directions—it's more poppy, if that's not too pretentious to say. But it's also…well, not darker than your previous stuff, but maybe a more finely developed sense of darkness? I see it as more open to the uninitiated. It’s not inward looking, it’s outward looking. And clarity is an aesthetic value on this one. So what you say is right.

There's a lot more call-and-response vocal stuff going on here—and this record finds your entire band from the last album intact. Has songwriting become more of a collaborative effort? What's it like to tell someone else, "Here, sing these lines"? The arranging is collaborative. That part of making music is done pretty fast, if the blueprint is complete enough to work with. Writing the songs with other voices in mind just widens the possible cast of characters. It’s one small step towards show tunes, but I don’t plan on exploring that territory.

• More than 300 workers have been arrested from the AgriProcessors kosher slaughterhouse in Postville, Iowa. The workers are suspected of being illegal aliens, and are being held at a fairground in Waterloo while Immigration officials try to work through the paperwork. There are also allegations of identity theft, stolen Social Security numbers, and a meth lab somewhere on the AgriProcessors property. Postville: Producing Beef, Poultry and MethIn related news, a Modern Orthodox couple in New York turns out to be behind many of the recent investigations into cruelty at AgriProcessors’ slaughterhouses. Hannah and Phillip Schein work as undercover investigators for PETA, and are the driving force behind the push to get AgriProcessors, to live up to the exacting standards of kashrut.

• An animated Israeli film about the 1982 massacres on Sabra and Shatila is the darling of Cannes this year. It still doesn’t have an American distributor.

• A gay couple in Israel who adopted a son from Cambodia were able to finalize his Israeli citizenship last week after eight years of waiting. This sets a precedent for the Interior Ministry to officially recognize same sex couples in Israel.

• 185 Jewish clergy members signed a petition urging Jewish tourists not to attend the Olympics in Beijing to protest Chinese involvement in Darfur and Tibet. The Anti- Defamation League responded to the petition the next day, calling the comparisons to the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games “inappropriate” and explaining that, “China is a complicated society that is changing and opening up in many ways.”

• An ADL poll found that the majority of Israel teenagers don’t believe another Holocaust is possible. Though Israeli teens and adults tend to agree that Israel is in danger and 52% of those surveyed even agree that “Israel is under a certain threat of destruction,” they don’t see another Holocaust on the horizon.

• The ultra-Orthodox community is in a tizzy over whether or not live performances by ultra-Orthodox pop stars are ever appropriate, even if men and women are seated completely separately. Rabbi Motke Blau, head of the Guards of Sanctity and Education in the Ultra-Orthodox community, says: “What does it look like? Michael Jackson! Lighting, lighters, idolatry, worship. It could be that they would have an evening meant only for men, but only when there is a real reason connected with the Torah, like bringing a new Torah scroll. An event of the type they want is not suited to the ultra-Orthodox public. Period."

• Some Jewish day schools have begun offering merit scholarships for students who have particular aptitude for things like dance and robotics, in addition to the need-based scholarships that they already offer. Some parents and educators think the merit-based scholarships are a good idea, pushing Jewish schools to be more competitive and raise their academic standards, but others think that offering financial aid to families who might not need it is a bad idea when so many families do need help covering the costs of day schools, which can be over $30,000 a year per student.

• Rabbi Avi Weiss and Rabbi Marc Angel have launched a new group for Orthodox rabbis called the International Rabbinic Fellowship, which they hope can be an answer to the Rabbinic Council of America and its constant edging to the right. More than a hundred rabbis have already expressed interest in the group.

• A new study done by a Brandeis professor says that there are far fewer men involved in the Conservative and Reform movements than women. Prof. Sylvia Barack Fishman’s report, called “The Growing Gender Imbalance in American Jewish Life” will be published later this month. In response, the Reform movement is working on different ways to encourage men and boys to participate more in synagogue and youth group leadership, to attend services more often, and to increase their Jewish study.

• Alysa Stanton-Ogulnick will be the first black Jewish female rabbi when she’s ordained by HUC Cincinatti next spring. In an interview with JTA she talks about her journey to Judaism, to rabbinical school, and struggling with prejudices in Israel.

• Israeli military officials have stopped granting interviews to the Israel bureau of Al-Jazeera, effectively cutting off a significant line of communication to the Arab world. The IDF began the boycott in response to Al Jazeera’s coverage of the Gaza operations earlier this year. Meanwhile, an Israeli expert on Arab media from Bar Ilan Univeristy, Mordechai Kedar, has taken it upon himself to be unofficial voice of Israel, and has appeared on Al Jazeera several times.
  

• In the wake of several recent attacks on Jews by African-Americans in Crown Heights, some with anti-Semitic undertones, a mediation group founded 17 years ago has reconvened. Project Care was established after the Crown Heights riots of 1991, with members from the African American and Jewish communities meeting to keep the lines of communication open. Though they haven’t met much in recent years, they’ve had three meetings in the past four weeks, as tension between the two communities grows.

• The Avi Chai Foundation awarded a $275,000 grant each to four individuals and one team of two on Tuesday. The Avi Chai Fellowship is based on the MacArthur genius grants, and is meant to “be a vehicle for investing in people with vision, creativity, courage, savvy and stamina to try new things, to think outside the conventional boxes or inside them in new ways, and to see opportunities where others see obstacles” according to Avi Chai Chairman Arthur Fried. The winners are Ariel Beery, Aharon Horwitz, Dr. Betsy Dolgin Katz, Rabbi Elie Kaunfer, Rabbi Dov Linzer, and Rabbi Menachem Schmidt.

• In Modiin, Israel, the first state-funded non-Orthodox synagogue has just opened. Though Orthodox congregations routinely get funding from the government for buildings, upkeep and even rabbi’s salaries, the Yozma congregation is the first Reform synagogue to get any money from the government for its building. To do so, it went before the Israeli Supreme Court twice.
  

• Last night, for the first time, a Jewish woman and a Muslim woman received masters degrees at the Catholic Theological Union in Chicago. CTU has expanded its mission beyond the Catholic community, hoping to foster more dialogue and cooperation in interfaith settings.

• Jerusalem hasn’t had a chief rabbi since 2003, and no one seems to mind except for Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, Israel’s chief Sephardic rabbi, who would like to see one of his sons appointed to the position.

Torah 2.0: Should we make a bracha for downloading a Torah widget?You know Chabad has a Facebook application, yes? Rabbi Moshe Plotkin of the New Paltz, NY Chabad, who made the Facebook application, has turned to the open system being used by Google. Yep, you can add a Torah Widget to your Google Desktop and iGoogle pages. The widget, which I added on both my Google and my Facebook pages, contains Torah odds and ends for study and links to the weekly pasha. Viral Torah. Discuss.

Widgipedia has a few similar widgetot, as well, and then there is Digi.Torah (note the website boasts access to the "Holly Book of Torah"), and a favorite of mine, the HebCal widget for Mac.

 

The Universal Torah Registry? Had I thought about this? Not really. I know I've held a Torah that was smuggled out of Germany in the 1940s. I know I've touched a Torah that was rescued from a burning building. I know each Torah has a story and we tell their stories in our congregations and families and that's that. But, this is Torah tracking on an entirely different level.

Oakley Sunglasses? Fake Prada bag? Torah?: Is your congregation's Torah registered?When I first heard about Universal Torah Registry, I thought Who the fuck steals a Torah? But, yeah, people are shady and after digging around a little, it turns out there is actually a Torah black market. Can you imagine how that deal would go? Shonda and a half. Can you imagine buying a Torah on eBay? How would you trust the story the seller gave you? Anyway. It took two years of research involving rabbis and crime specialists to figure out how to halachically catalog a scroll.

So, to catalog a Torah scroll, you get a registration kit for your congregation that includes a form to record various characteristics (Uh... in Hebrew? Rolled up? I'm an ass, I know, I know.), and a specifically coded template. Using a tiny needle, "a special code of micro-perforations is applied to strategic places in the scroll." Then, your congregation gets a certificate of registry.

So, if you do find your Torah missing, you call them up and it can, theoretically, be tracked down if someone tries to resell it and the potential buyer checks it out with the registry beforehand. What about your congregation's scrolls? Are they registered? Maybe a fabulous project to bring to your social action chair. Or, plan a fundraiser to cover the registration fee. Or, be like the NYC police officer who paid the registry fee for his shul himself when he heard about the organization.

This week on FaithHacker we're excited to welcome guest blogger Getzel Davis.  Getzel is, among other things, an environmental rock star, a former ADAMAH fellow, and pretty much the nicest guy I know.  To start things off I sent him some tough questions, and to no one's surprised, he totally rocked them. -TF

 

 

What kind of work are you doing now, and how does it fit into your spiritual journey?

I work for the Teva Learning Center as a Jewish environmental educator. Every week I get a new batch of 6^th grade day school students to try to inspire. We go off into the woods every day and practice feeling radical amazement in nature. After a week of group bonding and ecology lessons, I get to sit down with each child and school to help them brainstorm ways to make the world a healthier and happier place.

What's your favorite spiritual practice? Why?

My favorite spiritual practice at the moment is mikvah. It sounds a hokey, but time I get out of a mikvah, I physically feel spiritually cleansed (even if I am covered in muck from the lake). This year, to prepare for Yom Kippur, I dunked forty-nine times for the forty nine levels of spiritual impurity that people of capable of. When I got out, it felt like I was already at Neilah, the last service of Yom Kippur, when we are finally forgiven of our sins. I went through all the motions of Yom Kippur already knowing that I had been forgiven. It was incredibly powerful.

What's a Jewish ritual that really doesn't speak to you? Why?

Stoning gay people. I can’t imagine a compassionate G!d really wanted us to stone two consenting adults who love each other.

What's your favorite Jewish text to study and why?

My favorite text is the Mei Hashiloach by the Izbitzer Rebbe. Despite the fact that the Izbitzer was a leader of a chassidic ultra-orthodox Jews, half of his discourses are about the flawed nature of Jewish law. His radical theology allows for certain people at certain times to do perform acts contrary to normative Jewish law. This book is a great tool for anyone struggling personally with questions of halachic obligation.

What's a social justice issue that's really important to you and why?

I believe that the greatest issue facing humanity is global warming. Rising oceans and desertification of the land scare the shit of me. The solutions are not going to be easy things like recycling or buying hybrid cars (although both are great). The only way humanity will be able to avoid an incredibly ominous future is by radically changing how we consume things. We need to start holding producers responsible not only for the safety of a product while we own it, but also the impacts of its creation what happens to it after it has been thrown “away.”

Continue reading...

GMOs: totally not kosherI've been grappling with the problem of Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) for a long time now, and as my awareness of them has increased, their presence in my diet has decreased. This is partly due to health concerns, partly due to environmental factors, and partly a matter of social responsibility. The fact is, I don't trust companies like Monsanto with my body, with the land that my food is grown on, nor to have respect for (the few remaining) farmers who are still acting as stewards of the earth. No authoritative consensus has been reached on whether or not GMO foods are kosher, and I've been looking to the Torah for insight into the debate. What I've found thus far, is that so many of the practices inherent in agribusiness contradict the laws of the Torah and the Talmud, it's almost impossible to conceive of GMOs being kosher.

Starting from the beginning, here's a passage from Genesis, 1.29:

God said, "See, I give you every seed-bearing plant that is upon all the earth, and every tree that has seed-bearing fruit; they shall be yours for food."

GMO crops have historically been developed not to bear viable seed. In other words, each batch of GMO seeds will yield only one crop, and the seeds from that crop, the "second generation seeds" lose their vigor, forcing farmers to buy new seed each year. Companies like Monsanto have been developing Terminator seed technology.

Terminator refers to plants that are genetically engineered to render sterile seeds at harvest – a technology that aims to maximize seed industry profits by preventing farmers from re-planting harvested seed.

If that doesn't fly in the face of Torah, I don't know what does. Next, there's the problem of cross-pollination. Both the Torah and the Talmud comment on concern for one's neighbor. First, there's the good old quote from Leviticus 19.18:

Love your fellow as yourself

The Mishna takes it further, offering commentary on damages to neighbors.

Surprisingly, we are cautioned against causing the loss of benefit to another, even if he has no legal claim to it. The principle "that one should not drain the water of his well when others need it" is found in the Talmud. A Jew is even commanded to prevent damage threatening his neighbor from an outside force.

The Talmudic sages expanded these laws to also prohibit psychological disturbances, such as possible exposure to a neighbor's observation, noise, and so on. Anyone suffering from such annoyances may appeal to the courts to force his neighbor to remove them. This may include the removal of the cause of the noise, even if the noise is only indirectly due to it and even if its removal will cause the owner financial hardship. Based on these rules, the following guiding principle was drafted: "One may not save his own property from damage at the expense of his fellow's damage." This principle could serve as a foundation in modern legislation for pollution control.

Cross-pollination of GM seeds has come to be called "genetic" or "biotech" pollution. It can be caused, for example, when wind transports a GMO seed into a non-GMO field. The horror stories of farmers finding that their crops have been cross-pollinated with GMOs are rampant. Not only do organic crops lose their premium value, but to add insult to injury, many of these farmers often wind up getting sued by the very biotech companies whose seed polluted their fields in the first place. Take Percy Schmeiser, who was sued by Monsanto when his fields were contaminated by their GMO "Roundup Ready canola." Then there was the whole Starlink debacle, in which a biotech corn not approved for human consumption made its way onto grocery store shelves.

These two issues alone--GMO crops that don't bear viable seeds, and damages to neighbors (near and far)--seem like reasons good enough to label GMOs as Not Kosher, but they're just the beginning. I'll follow this post up soon with more examples of why I don't think there's anything kosher about GMOs.

Yesterday night I was talking online with a friend of mine and conversation got pretty awesome. I've redacted his name, but mine is still here. This is what happens when day school graduates grow up ...

You're So Frum: it's so hot

X says: you're so fucking frum
X says: it makes me sick
Tamar says: you are the first person ever to say that to me
Tamar says: thank you!
X says: just talking all day about toire toire toire
Tamar says: what else is there to talk about?
Tamar says: actually, it goes something like toire sex toire sex toire sex
X says: well, everything is actually toire
X says: sex is toire
Tamar says: depends if it's good sex or not
Tamar says: bad sex is not toire
X says: bad sex is i'm afraid
Tamar says: nuh uh
Tamar says: it's like midrash or something
Tamar says: not Torah mamish
X says: i'll accept that
X says: it's definitely misinai though
Tamar says:i'm not so sure
Tamar says: I’ll have to think about it

And then later:
Tamar says: good sex=pshita
Tamar says: bad sex=remez
Tamar says: or is it the other way around?
X says: peshita la lerabbanit tamar
X says: ipcha mistabra
X says: pshat is just sex
X says: remez is good sex
X says: sod is simultaneous orgasms
Tamar says: what's drash?
X says:blowjob?
Tamar says: you're amazing
Tamar says: will you be my rabbi?
X says: yeah baby
X says: i should write a book
X says: The orchard of sex
Tamar says:i'd buy it
Tamar says: there would be commentary and stuff on the sides
Tamar says: and diagrams
X says:you could talk down to your audience
X says:just like other artscroll books
X says: you'd love it
Tamar says: bend at the knees and then bow until you see the labia
X says: remember that with frum girls, the more you mumble during sex the better. she'll know you're talking to god
Tamar says:When you reach simultaneous orgasm say, "Oh Gee dash dee!"
Tamar says: or maybe, "Amen!"
X says: awesome
X says: the act of sex can be consider one long bracha
Tamar says: when do you say barchu u baruch shmo?
Tamar says: initial penetration?
X says: you don't
X says: it would be a hefsek
X says: the girl is yoitse on the guy's bracha

Recent polemics by proud and angry atheists have gotten many of us—faithful and skeptical alike—thinking better of belief in God. Books like Sam Harris’s Letter to a Christian Nation, Richard Dawkins’s The God Delusion, and most recently, Christopher Hitchens’s God is Not Great argue that it is simply unreasonable to believe. Science can debunk the historical or biological claims of any sacred text, they say, and religious morality contradicts the modern zeitgeist. Even when the scriptures do present us with a moral innovator, faith alone rarely compels believers to live accordingly. These angry atheists reserve some of their sharpest criticism for religious moderates, arguing that a reasoned and critical respect for religion simply provides comfort to the enemy. The slope between Jimmy Carter and Jerry Falwell—or, for that matter, between Reza Aslan and Osama bin Laden—is simply too slippery.

Lilith: Hot as hell, nobody's wifeWe've all heard of Lilith, but really... who was she? 

My vague memories from a women's studies course suggest that she appears in the Torah, but elsewhere as well.  That she's an archetype from our Jewish tradition, but also mythologies beyond our own...  that she was Adam's first wife or something.  That her story is basically a defense of unequal treatment of Jewish women.

But a cursory search online tells me that she is NOT named anywhere in the Torah.  Though she does turn up in the Dead Sea Scrolls:

"And I, the Instructor, proclaim His glorious splendour so as to frighten and to te[rrify] all the spirits of the destroying angels, spirits of the bastards, demons, Lilith, howlers, and [desert dwellers…] and those which fall upon men without warning to lead them astray from a spirit of understanding..."

Okay, so she's keeping nasty company... But the Talmud gives us a lot more, offering a portrait of a winged demon with long hair, a sexual predator:

"Rab Judah citing Samuel ruled: If an abortion had the likeness of Lilith its mother is unclean by reason of the birth, for it is a child but it has wings." (Niddah 24b)

"[Expounding upon the curses of womanhood] In a Baraitha it was taught: She grows long hair like Lilith, sits when making water like a beast, and serves as a bolster for her husband." (‘Erubin 100b)

"R. Hanina said: One may not sleep in a house alone [in a lonely house], and whoever sleeps in a house alone is seized by Lilith." (Shabbath 151b)

"R. Jeremiah b. Eleazar further stated: In all those years [130 years after his expulsion from the Garden of Eden] during which Adam was under the ban he begot ghosts and male demons and female demons [or night demons], for it is said in Scripture, And Adam lived a hundred and thirty years and begot a son in own likeness, after his own image, from which it follows that until that time he did not beget after his own image…When he saw that through him death was ordained as punishment he spent a hundred and thirty years in fasting, severed connection with his wife for a hundred and thirty years, and wore clothes of fig on his body for a hundred and thirty years. – That statement [of R. Jeremiah] was made in reference to the semen which he emitted accidentally." (‘Erubin 18b)

Comparing ‘Erubin 18b and Shabbath 151b with the later passage from the Zohar: “She wanders about at night, vexing the sons of men and causing them to defile themselves (19b),” it appears clear that this Talmudic passage indicates such an averse union between Adam and Lilith.

It would seem that the stories of Lilith as Adam's first wife develop later, and turn this demon-creature into a Jewess of sorts.  As the story goes, Lilith refused to settle for "doing it" missionary style, and so Adam had to find himself a new wife.  As far as I can tell, this version doesn't come around until about 1000 CE, and it is taken from the Alphabet of Ben Sira:

He then created a woman for Adam, from the earth, as He had created Adam himself, and called her Lilith. Adam and Lilith immediately began to fight. She said, 'I will not lie below,' and he said, 'I will not lie beneath you, but only on top. For you are fit only to be in the bottom position, while I am to be the superior one.' Lilith responded, 'We are equal to each other inasmuch as we were both created from the earth.' But they would not listen to one another. When Lilith saw this, she pronounced the Ineffable Name and flew away into the air.

Ah, yeah... see...  THAT's the Lilith I remember.  Too bad she comes from what basically amounts to medieval porn.

 

I’ve always been a fan of Ellen Frankel’s Five Books of Miriam: A Woman’s Commentary on the Torah, but it’s just that, A woman’s commentary. And while I think Frankel is interesting, I’m not likely to make her my posek anytime soon. But I’m hugely excited about The Torah: A Women’s Commentary, which is coming out in December.
Women: Rock the Torah
There are tons of books out there that try to encourage women to study Torah. We have great female Torah scholars, and amazing, wise women acting as our role models in the Torah—but this is the first translation and commentary to look at the Torah from a feminine lens, and really address all of the issues women face when they engage with Torah. In a Chicago Tribune article about the new translation, Rabbi Hara Person, editor in chief of the URJ press (which is publishing the volume), explained:

"We deal with the treatment of women and their exclusion at times…We deal with the difficult issues of menstrual blood in Leviticus, and we talk about the role of blood in the Torah and in our lives. We deal with that stuff head-on and don't shy away from it."

That is AWESOME. It’s like the Our Bodies, Ourselves for the Torah.

The Torah: A Women’s Commentary doesn’t come out for seven more months, but you can pre-order copies on the URJ website, where you even get a special pre-publication price. Make your mom (and sister, and aunt, and grandmother, and niece, and best friend etc.) proud. Order your copy today.

Leviticus: It's way more interesting than you thinkWow. Leviticus may be an excruciatingly boring book, the ugly red-headed stepchild in the Pentateuch—what with all those laws and laws and laws, laid out with all the narrative flair of the instruction manual for an assemble-it-yourself desk—but if you skip ahead to where the story heats up again in Numbers, you’re making a mistake.

Former National Review literary editor and current Discovery Institute scholar David Klinghoffer says that the cipher to the mysteries of American political life is right there in the laws of ritual contamination. Those laws, it turns out, are more than just a bit of perverse fretting about ejaculation and menstruation—they’re also a pre-emptive attack against Darwin and Karl Marx, and against the materialist worldview more generally. You’ll have to read it to see how Klinghoffer gets there.

Of course, if you’re an atheist, you won’t buy it, since he’s working from the Bible and the Talmud as his sources. This produced a bit of in-house Jewcy debate, with Tahl and I discussing the extent to which we want Jewcy articles to be broadly persuasive, to operate from assumptions that are widely shared. The new, decentralized “read/write weO-P-R-H: She's God, more or lessb,” aka Web 2.0, of which Jewcy is a part, is often blamed for atomizing debate, with lots of insular groups, each one talking among themselves, agreeing with themselves, and operating from premises that they share with no one else. Somehow our conversation ended up with Tahl saying “God is not a Republican. He’s Oprah,” the rough idea being that it takes an I-Thou master like Oprah to bust through the borders of all these incompatible groups and appeal to everyone.

So is Klinghoffer’s article just another sort of internally-directed salvo, persuasive to people who already agree with him, but meaningless to everyone else?

I don’t think so. Even if you’re a secular liberal (as I am, more or less) who thinks his premises are rubbish, the article still gives you a fascinating insight into the mind of a freethinking theocon, a theocon who’s come up with a novel formulation for expressing what distinguishes him from you. And for good measure he places the Torah in the nature/nurture, environment/individual debate…who knew that the redactors of Leviticus saw nineteenth century Europe coming, and freaked out?

Read it here.

Look who's coming to dinner?I had every intention of blogging about the Sephardic tradition today, but the comments from earlier are better than my post would be, so now I'm posting about why you should be a good Jew and (not) eat a hamburger.

See, recently I was hanging out with an Orthodox Rabbi, and I mentioned that I'd discovered there are Jewish thoughts on vegetarianism, observant Jews who feel that vegetarianism fulfills the commandments.

But my bearded friend disagreed strongly, and said that in particular, we are supposed to eat both meat and fish on Shabbat. He made a reference to the Talmud, though I can't find it now.

So I thought I'd ask if any of you know the reference and can hook me up? Anyone know where it says we should all eat a fish/meat medly on Friday night?

And I thought I'd direct you all to this site, which I've not seen before, but which seems to provide a nicely evenhanded approach to the issue, and summarizes:

Judaism accepts the idea of a vegetarian diet, though dependent on one's intention:

Vegetarianism based on the idea that we have no moral right to kill animals is not an acceptable Jewish view.

Vegetarianism for aesthetic or health reasons is acceptable; indeed, the Torah's mandate to "guard yourselves carefully" (Deut. 4:15) requires that we pay attention to health issues related to a meat-centered diet. Some points to consider include the contemporary increase in sickness in animals created by factory farm conditions, and the administration of growth hormones, antibiotics and other drugs given to animals. All of these may be possible health risks to humans.

In addition, there is the possible violation of tzaar baalai chaim (causing pain to animals) resulting from mass production methods of raising, transporting and slaughtering animals.

Basically, it suggests that all extremes are icky. Which makes a kind of sense sense to me. But then I'm not a wingnut vegan, nor do I like to slaughter things in my backyard and eat ribs every night for dinner.

You?