Tradition

So Last WeekHanukkah has come and gone. And with eight days (weird!) left ‘til That Other Holiday, those of us who find ourselves unwilling or -able to pretend we’re gentiles had better get used to the fact that we’re going to be doing a helluva lot of smiling-and-nodding in response to well-intentioned but totally moot Hanukkah wishes in the coming days.

You know what I’m talking about: those exclamations of “Happy Holidays!” or “Merry Christmas!” that turn, with squeaky awareness, to “...or, uhhh...Happy Hanukkah?” when it dawns on the speaker that there’s a real, live Jew in the house.

They don’t know that Hanukkah’s over. They don’t care when Hanukkah is. Hell, I don’t care that much about when Hanukkah is, either. It’s like wishing folks a “Merry Christmas” the week after New Year’s. But at least Christmas is about something (kinda) religiously meaningful. So not even. “Happy Father’s Day," maybe? Happy Irish Independence Commemoration?

For some reason this year has produced a bumper crop of Hanukkah-themed CDs. Why? And are any of them any good? We got young adult novelist Matthue Roth to investigate. Check back all week for more reviews.

Kirk Douglas's favorite holiday jams: Sam Glaser's albumUnder consideration today:
Sam Glaser's Rockin' Chanukah Revue 

I know that we stick by Hillel's method of lighting the menorah, starting with one small light and working our way up to a full set of eight, but I don't want to start my week off weak, wallowing in short E.P.s or a tepid, barely-cognizant hipster doozy of a Chanukah album, so I'm just going to jump in full-throttle: the 15-track Sam Glaser's Rockin' Chanukah Revue.

First, the artist. Sam Glaser is a Jewish musician, serious and soulful--"I have all his CDs," claims no less than Kirk Douglas in the press kit-whose usual instrument of choice, a keyboard, is tender and maudlin. In his publicity photos, he alternates between a distinguished synagogue stud and the "wacky guy" in the Bar Mitzvah band.

Second, the album artwork. Underneath the title, written in big Broadway-lights letters, is a pixilated photo of Glaser, who has ditched his very mellow and very trademarked keyboard for a rockin' electric guitar. The picture is taken from behind, with Glaser's body obviously reeling from an intense electric-guitar strum. Wow! You'd better buckle your safety belts...this Chanukah revue is going to rock.

And the thing is: from the album's first few notes-a wah-wah electric guitar, slightly tense, slightly warbly, building in the corner-something is definitely about to explode. In the background, slight drumrolls, a sign of the impending madness. Then the drums kick in, the brass picks up, and ....the song breaks out to John Philip Sousa-influenced soft jazz?

Look: I know how you probably feel about soft jazz. I also know how you're probably going to feel about Glaser's voice, which is comfortable and well-trained, yet has an air of self-importance that never totally goes away. It might not be too much of an exaggeration to say that he's channeling Frank Sinatra-or, to be more fair (and more accurate) that he's channeling Dean Martin.

"We Light the Lights" breaks out of this meandering into a pretty solid, fist-pumping Chanukah singalong anthem. It's got just the right amount of cheese: the horn section is straight out of a Jewish wedding band, and I don't know how else to describe it. Lines like "The dark doesn't hold a candle to our prayers" can be either heartwarming or hackneyed, and are quite possibly both. But the song's musical progression, from "More Than a Feeling" to Rat Pack to Diana Ross and the Supremes-like choral arrangements, is almost dizzyingly fascinating. And when Glaser and his backing singers kick into the repeating chorus, "We light!", we really feel a surge of honest joy.

And that, my friends, is just the first track.

From here, I don't know if I can describe the scope, the wackiness, and the sheer unpredictability of Rockin' Chanukah Revue. Can I just tell you, the second song is called "Dreidl Star!" and is a tribute to (I don't even want to call it a parody; it's too honest for that) the Deep Purple song. "Nobody gonna take my dreidel/it'll never hit the ground/Nobody gonna beat my dreidel/It'll break the speed of sound." I don't know if it's all Glaser's work directed at the overcaffeinated 8-to-12-year-old set, but he says the word, and all manner of rawk comes into the room. His oh-so-tasteful voice floats above it, paradoxically, but there's actually a fair amount of unhingedness, especially around the guitar breakdowns.

And then, just when "Dreidel Star!"'s last screaming banshee of a guitar fades to black and you think you can't handle any more adrenaline, soft piano chords come up. You recognize this song. You don't think he's going to do it. And then he does it.

"Maccabee, Maccabee/burning bright, eternally," he croons.

And no matter how bitter, jaded and ironic the outside world might get, Sam Glaser keeps it bright. Bright, shining, and Chanukah fresh: and why was there debate over whether the single flask of oil lasted for eight days, anyway? Let's just sit on our irony, stop biting our tongues, and bite some latkes instead. When Sam Glaser sings, whether it's "Maoz Tsure" or a Jewish version of the Mother Mary panegyric "Let It Be," let's believe him.

Not all of the songs on Rockin' Chanukah Revue are parodies-"We Light the Lights," for example, is pure Glaser innovation. But those in search of the conventional Rock will be treated well: in addition to Deep Purple, Glaser pays homage to Smokey Robinson, Van Halen, and whoever wrote "Maoz Tsur" (a poet only known by the name Mordechai, according to the acrostic, if you're wondering). There's also the bizarrely appropriate "My Sukkah's on Fire," and a musical version of the blessings over the candles. If you're going to only buy one CD for Chanukah, you might not make it this one. But you'd be missing out.

This semester I taught a college-level Bible as Literature class, and it has been quite the ride, to say the least. Out of 30 students, I would say that at least 25 of them come from conservative Christian backgrounds, which means they view me—and all of my claims about midrash and an evolving biblical text—with more than an inkling of suspicion, despite my own unapparent but sordid, long-lost background in the world of Evangelicals.

On the first day of class, four or five students approached me, and one said, “So, we really need to know: are you Jewish, or are you Christian? We need to know so that we can decide whether we are going to stay in this class.”

And now, my suspicions kicked in. They had been talking about me, and had somehow elected a leader, their own little makeshift Moses, to rise up from among them and ask the loaded question. I was the Egyptian, about to be struck down and buried in the sand. I was sweating on the inside, unperturbed on the outside. In my imagination: this could have been me.

The implied question seemed to be, “Are you going to regurgitate all of the ideas about the bible that have been communicated to me since birth by my conservative Christian community? If not, I’m out of here.”

It’s a literature class, not a theology class, which means that how, or rather if, I define myself is none of their business. But I felt compelled to answer.

My initial inclination was to say “Jewish,” but then I thought, why make it so easy? “I’m both,” I responded, “and neither. If that sounds interesting to you, then you’ll want to stay in this class. If not, I believe there’s a Catholic teaching one of the other sections, and there’s also a Reform Jew teaching a section. Plenty of diversity. The choice is up to you.”

Moses seemed satisfied: “Okay.”

I knew I would never see them again. But I was wrong. I was also impressed—they all came back, and they, along with all of the other students, have been amazing, despite their initial difficulty with reading the bible as literature, and not as theology.

Of course, it has taken some longer than others to shed the tell-tale signs of religious indoctrination. Last week, one young woman, a great student, asked me earnestly if the confusing reference to both God and God’s messenger in the story of Moses’s encounter with the burning bush was a reference to “the trinity.”

In a way, I didn’t mind, because it revealed that she was reading closely and interpreting the text from her own perspective and position. And it was a question—an attempt to understand—rather than an authoritative statement. She was searching for a way to make it mean something to her, and I think I can respect that. I wonder if we might even call it midrash.

A midrashic impulse is what keeps Torah alive. I myself have a slightly unnatural obsession with midrash and anything that feels midrashic, and so I’m happy when I see my students starting to think along these lines. I derive curious pleasure from listening to them during class discussions, as they “turn it and turn it,” much like the rabbinic admonition.

Do they know they are being Talmudic?

But I got a little surprise last week, when Brandon Kleiber, one of my students, turned in his weekly response essay. It wasn’t exactly an essay. In fact, he completely disregarded my instructions, and decided instead to re-tell the story of Abraham’s binding of Isaac. It made me laugh so hard that I had to share it (with his permission), and give him an A. I only wish I had discovered this little gem in time to post it during the Days of Awe . . .

Enjoy. (And, note how he has even incorporated the Hebrew emphatic—“drink, yes, drink”—into his “midrash.”)

Continue reading...

The following speech will be delivered at the United Jewish Communities
General Assembly in Nashville, TN, on Monday, November 12.

Enabling the next big Jewish idea
How Federations can facilitate the Jewish future
by Daniel Sieradski

Every so often, a conversation will arise in Jewish professional circles around "the next big Jewish idea." The question is asked, what's the next big thing that's going reinvigorate and renew Jewish life for an increasingly intermarried and disinterested American Jewry? What's the silver bullet that's going to save us from our own self-destruction?

Brandeis is currently offering a professorship and a six-figure salary graciously provided by Charles Bronfman to someone who can devise, if not a solution, a pathway towards a solution to this question.

Yet it is my belief that the next big Jewish idea will not be hatched inside a board room. It will not be the result of a research study. It will not come from within an institution at all. Rather, the next big Jewish idea will be the work of a young, independently minded individual seeking to address the needs of his or her own self or his or her own immediate community.

But the next big Jewish idea will not meet institutional funding guidelines -- or at least, that's what the rejection letters will say. It will be for any number of reasons: The project is too local; too global; too narrow; too ambitious; the subject too political; the creators too eccentric. Perhaps they're more creatively-minded than business-minded and are thus bad at writing grants. Maybe they're too young, or too idealistic.

And sometimes the grantmaker themselves are so disconnected from the realities of what the Jewish public needs -- like the funders who don't even have a computer on their desks -- that you're done before you've even started. Sometimes funders just don't get it; or they do get it and they feel threatened by it. They're afraid to give up too much control. They want safer bets.

Whatever the case, Jewish innovators who pursue the non-profit route are generally at the mercy of grantmakers, who often times are setting standards impossible to reach for folks who are just starting out. Funders want a lofty return on investment without ever taking real risks, ignoring the recommendations of even their own advisors, like the sociologist Steven M. Cohen who, in an October 2006 interview advised taking a more open stance to radical thinking, telling JTA "we need more exposure in the Jewish community to views which challenge our own."

For an innovator, the heartbreak accompanying this process can be debilitating. Getting turned down again and again when you believe in what you're doing so strongly... It's soul crushing. Exhausted by one failed grant application after the other, many fold up shop before their ideas ever see the light of day.

The next big Jewish idea, in fact, has probably already come and gone, and been shot down by no less than a dozen Jewish grantmaking organizations. And because the innovator will have no resources at his or her disposal with which to continue his project, he will probably walk away from it, crushed and discouraged, and a revolutionary idea that could have transformed American Jewry forever will never come to be.

It's all too familiar a story. In the past six years, I have encountered countless young Jewish innovators who are engineering incredible projects that will never see the light of day. I have even engineered a number of my own, that are currently flailing to stay above water. Take, for example, my website ShulShopper.com, an online service that enables people to find a place to daven that suits their needs and interests, and to rate and review their local congregations so as to help others find a place that works for them.  The YU Commentator called ShulShopper "the biggest revolution in the Jewish community since the internet was erected." Yet the site has remained in beta for nearly a year, with many pieces still broken and unable to be fixed, due to a lack of funding interest.

So where do federations come in?

Federations do some of the most important work in the Jewish community. They feed and clothe people, they support social services, they fund schools. These are things that are necessary and valuable.

Yet it's no secret that the Federation system is in a bind, desperate to maintain its relevancy to younger generations -- those who are passionately committed to Jewish life, as well as the disaffected.  Few of us out there living independent Jewish lives of our own making have much of an idea as to the value of Federations, which we perceive as bureaucratic dinosaurs that stifle creativity rather than engender it, or which otherwise represent narrow interests, and sideline alternative viewpoints.

As Richard Marker wrote for Jewschool in August 2005, "There is a profound disillusionment or frustration with established institutions. They are accurately not perceived as agile, responsive, or innovative. And because they typically have a broad agenda, requiring consensus decision making, involvement within them runs counter to the most current behavior among the most creative or passionate. Once upon a time, patience was sufficient; today, few people are willing to be long term apprentices in Jewish communal life when the rest of life requires and rewards other attributes. Thus, the most interesting and interested younger Jews would much rather associate with a start up or special interest group which reflects them rather than with an established, multipurpose organizations."

And yet we are nonetheless desperate for each other's attention. Federations want to attract a new generation of donors, and young innovators want support for their projects. Despite our differences, you need us and we need you.

There is a way for us to work together.

Traditionally, federations, like most funding agencies, invite applications from grant-seekers and then select among them. This allocation process certainly has its merits. But there's a downside as well; in fact several. One is that the selection process is imperfect; second it can be biased; and third, it breeds suspicion, alienation, and disgruntlement among both grant recipients and those who are rejected.

There have been some wonderful programs that Federation has supported, in particular Bikkurim, the incubator for new Jewish ideas, and the 6 Points Fellowship, which provides grants to new Jewish artists, that have been a boon to Jewish innovation. These programs provide precisely the type support which startup initiatives need in order to get themselves off the ground, and they are commendable and worthy of applause. I am proud to have been involved with several Bikkurim-supported initiatives as well as 6 Points as both a consultant and a contractor.

But perhaps these programs go too far in some respects, and not far enough in others. For starters, they are highly competitive, and offer only a few slots annually. Furthermore, they require participation levels that may be too much for individuals who are working a full-time job while running their project on the side. In addition, they bring the constraint of institutional politics to bear on participants' endeavors, imposing artificial limitations on creative thinking. In other words, they're not for everyone.

Let's imagine a different way of doing business. Federations provide for the infrastructure, the environment, the resources to allow for creative individuals and groups to grow in a way that requires no invidious distinctions or a process of selection.

Rather than a system of gatekeepers and shepherds, which discriminate and exclude based on whichever criteria, I believe what we need is an open infrastructure that lends itself to innovation.

We are overdue for establishing an open marketplace for Jewish ideas, bootstrapped by communal funds. Or as Jonathan Sarna called it in a recent JTA interview, what we need is more Jewish venture capitalism. "We only have to look at the high-tech industry," said Sarna, "to see that all ideas don't all pan out, but all you need is one Google or Mapquest to justify a whole lot of ideas that don't go anywhere."

The Jewish community was intended as a meritocracy. In the era of Judges, our representatives were chosen based on the merit of their Torah and their conduct -- how much their words and deeds resonated with others. Likewise, in chassidut, a leader is chosen based on his merit, his followers developing a sense of dvekut derived from the inspiration they find in their rebbe's teachings.

Likewise we should let the market decide what "the next big Jewish idea" is, based on its merit and its resonance with the community.

Certainly, there ought to be some type of criteria or some sort of way of judging which projects truly add value to both the individual and communal Jewish experience.  However, that criteria should ultimately be determined by the public affected by these projects.  Furthermore, funders should have greater tolerance for failure. Success breeds success but failure often happens because great ideas don't get the encouragement or the resources they need.

So here's what I propose:

1. Create resource hubs for small to mid size local Jewish organizations at every federation. Organize free networking events and public seminars.

2. Build an online archive of webinars on non-profit management, marketing, fundraising, technology, and so forth. Enable innovators -- who, again, are probably working full-time jobs in addition to saving the Jews -- by letting them learn at their own pace, whenever they want, from wherever they want. Empower innovators by producing enriching, informative, and impactful media, and by making it freely available online.

3. Provide fiscal sponsorship, ie., the ability to take tax deductible donations, to any applicant meeting basic criteria, thereby enabling any initiative to get off and running.

4. Develop tools and resources that are universal and reusable. For example, instead of giving grants to individual Jewish orgs needing to develop websites, develop and deploy a hosted content management system that specifically addresses the needs of Jewish organizations.

5. And finally, and most importantly, create a Jewish Robinhood Fund. The Robinhood Fund is a website that facilitates microlending and microgiving. Users browse the site, find causes they're excited about, and are able, right there on the spot, to donate or lend money to that cause.  Think of it as an online, interactive Slingshot Journal -- one that provides access to both grant-makers and grant-seekers.  Not only should Federation embrace this model, but they should match funds where possible.

By laying the groundwork for innovation, by enabling innovators to get up and running, and by not discriminating based upon the institution's own objectives, but rather by giving all ideas an opportunity to flourish, Federations can provide an invaluable communal service that will elicit the respect and appreciation of young innovators and their constituents alike, so that they can say, "Ah! This is what Federation does for me. This is why they're important, and this is why they deserve our support."

In failing to do so, the distance between today's institutions and tomorrow's young Jewish leaders, will continue to grow by leaps and bounds.

Thank you.

Vive la difference: The event flier Last Thursday night, NYU hosted a debate between Birthright Israel founder Michael Steinhardt, rabbi and TV personality Shmuley Boteach, and law professor Noah Feldman on the question “Are Jews different?” But as commenter agenious put it over in the Noah Feldman thread, what took place wasn’t really a debate. (I suspect agenius and I don’t agree on much, but we’re together on that.) It was more like a chance for three very different Jews to air their beliefs about Judaism, followed by a mini-drubbing of Noah Feldman by the NYU audience.

Rabbi Shmuley, who spoke first, testified to the virtues of Torah-based Jewish values. I can't top Jewlicious's hilarious description, so I'm just going to quote it: "Shmuley Boteach is, and I do not exaggerate, an evangelical Protestant minister with a beard and hand gestures." The girl sitting next to me, wearing a sensible skirt and loafers that I can only describe as tsniut, leaned over and whispered “Isn’t he great? I was at his house for dinner last Shabbat.”

Michael Steinhardt, up next, argued that Jewish values are indeed worthy, but not because of the Torah. He believes that Jews developed a series of core values over the centuries: education, tzedakah, belief in the here and now, a beneficial sense of outsiderness, a strong sense of group responsibility, and an ability to succeed any society based on individualism and meritocracy. These six values make Jews special, he explained, so we can really scrap the rest, including the Torah. At this most of the crowd gasped, and the NYU freshman in front of me put down her Sidekick and reapplied her lip gloss.

Noah Feldman: Dapper! Noah Feldman was up next. (“He’s so cute!” said my new Orthodox friend. She was right—if Tiger Beat made pin-up posters of Jewish intellectuals, he’d be their best seller.) He put forth a third opinion: There’s no point in preserving Jewish values if they’re not worth saving. Rather than argue about how best to sell them to the 12 million unaffiliated Jews of the world, we should be examining them critically, to see what good they do. “We are not in the business of preservation for its own sake,” he said, “at least we ought not to be.”

To me, this makes perfect sense. I should reveal my biases: I’m one of those 12 million unaffiliated Jews. My family belongs to a Reform synagogue which I attend twice a year on the high holidays because, like a lot of Jewish girls, I’m fairly close with my parents. I had a Bat Mitzvah the year My So-Called Life debuted; the latter had a much greater influence on my adolescence. I’ve tried Shabbat on occasion and I basically enjoy it, but I enjoy bacon-wrapped shrimp too. My mind is open: I’m curious about Judaism and I think about it constantly. But nothing has ever successfully convinced me that a life of Jewish observance would be better than my current secular existence.

Both Shmuley and Steinhardt, it seemed to me, were preaching to the converted—or the unconverted, I suppose, in Steinhardt’s case. Shmuley’s points seemed tautological: The Torah is great because it’s great. Steinhardt seemed to be participating in a different discussion altogether; he was essentially arguing for a re-definition of “unaffiliated,” since the Jewish values on his list don’t require any kind of behavior change for most of us prodigal types. Only Feldman took the conversation away from describing Judaism and towards engaging with it.

The Jewish community's best mustache: SteinhardtI may have been the only unaffiliated Jew in the audience, though, because everyone seemed less interested in discussing Judaism’s role in contemporary society than in Noah Feldman’s family life. The moderator started the pile-on by asking a spectacularly wimpy question about a legal case Feldman had handled between two different members of the Jewish community. At the time, Feldman had said it was a shame this intra-Jewish conflict couldn’t be resolved without bringing in the Federal government. “So,” asked the moderator, “when is it appropriate to bring inside Jewish issues to the outside world?”

“Nothing is ‘inside’ anymore,” Feldman replied. If you’re proud of your community, you should be public about what takes place there. Also, he added, it was pretty obvious that the real issue at stake wasn’t the intra-Jewish legal case he’d handled a few years ago; it was his infamous New York Times article.

An effusive 2004 NYU grad stood up to gush about Birthright. He said he’d been to the recent reunion, and the whole room burst into applause—I guess a lot of people had been there. On the bus on the way up to the Steinhardt estate, he’d been struck by what he described as a spiritual experience: a sudden, overwhelming certainty that someday he would have his own kids, and Birthright would send them to Israel too. “You’re doing a good job,” he concluded to Steinhardt, “and it’s working.”

Then he turned to Feldman. “My question is for you. How are you going to raise your children?”

“Ooooooooooh,” said everyone in the room. This was the Jewish equivalent of smacking your dueling partner with a silk-lined glove.

Feldman replied that of course he was raising his kids Jewish—it’s a part of who he is. But he’s also raising them in his wife’s tradition.

Preach on: Rev ShmuleyThe girl next to me chose this moment to whisper that she has a friend who thinks it’s evil to raise as Jewish the children of a non-Jewish mother, because when they turn 18 they’ll find out that they’re not real Jews. “Can’t they convert?” I asked her. Just like that, our friendship ended.

Agenius wonders why Feldman wants to be accepted by his community. He’s a success in every other aspect of his life—Shmuley compared him to Einstein, another intermarried Jew who did his people proud—so why does he want to be a star among Jews, too?

This question may have been intended rhetorically, but it’s a good one. Why would someone embrace both Judaism and a non-Jewish spouse? Perhaps because, for most of us, Judaism is only once facet of our fractured 21^st-century personalities. We’re not used to swearing total allegiance to any single identity, and we see no reason to join organizations that ask us to give up every other part of our selves. That’s why unaffiliated Jews don’t show up to debates about Jewish values—because they’ve come to believe that you can’t engage curiously with Judaism without becoming a Super-Jew. (I see this all the time as a Jewcy editor recruiting writers; I ask them if they want to participate in a professional relationship with the magazine, and they react as if I’m trying to get them join a cult.) Of course it’s risky to ask secular Jews to participate in honest discussions about Judaism; they might discover that they don’t like it. But to me it seems like a worthwhile pursuit – much more useful than fretting about Noah Feldman’s personal life.

* * *

Past Jewcy coverage of Noah Feldman:

Q&A with the Author of "Orthodox Paradox"
JTA Misses the Point on Feldman
The Rules of Engagement
The Feldman Flare-Up

The Lower East Side has gotten steadily more obnoxious since, oh, Rent debuted, but it’s managed to retain some vestiges of its old Jewish past, even if the old chevra kadisha (that’s morgue to you) is now a pizza place called Chickie Pigs. The new NYC Real Estate video blog Into the Box talks to Sammy Gluck, an Orthodox Jew who runs a menwear store in the neighborhood.
 

Part of the problem with our current debate about the intellectual and moral superiority of atheism has to do with semantics. Atheism is simply defined as the disbelief in God. Yet are the bestselling atheists in our midst -- Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Christopher Hitchens -- only arguing against the argument from design, or is there more to their collective plaint than that? Spinoza used God and Nature interchangeably and synonymously, which has led modern readers of his Ethics and Tractatus Theologico-Politicus to surmise that he was a closet atheist. It's true that Spinoza's life work sought to debunk and discredit emotion and faith-- not for nothing did the non-Jewish Jew rank imagination as the lowest form of cognition -- in favor of Pure Reason or a priori truth. Sub specie aeternitatis does not mean everything that endures by the will of heaven but rather by the known (and unknown) laws of the cosmos.

What do we really mean in modern parlance when we refer to an "atheist"? Is this someone who reflexively laughs away the notion of an invisible man in the sky as prima facie absurd, or someone who uses a centuries-old methodology to arrive at the same conclusion? (Orwell once admitted that it would take him a while to combat a flat-earther because all the evidence of the earth's roundness had to be remembered or relearned on the spot.) What we're talking about is the difference between a lazy heckler and a careful investigator, an irascible dogmatist and a cool-headed scientist. The former takes it on faith, as it were, that there is no God; the latter sets out to prove it.

Joseph Stalin's atheism came cheap. Rebecca Goldstein and Steven Pinker's did not.

In your book on Spinoza, you talk about your own religious education in an orthodox Jewish school, and how Spinoza was trotted out by one of your teachers as precisely the kind of heretical thinker that good Jewish girls should avoid. But this seemed to make you especially interested in him. Why do you still like Spinoza so much? 

GOLDSTEIN: It's interesting. It's almost like there are two different Spinozas. And I really didn't bring them together until I wrote the book. At my very orthodox all-girls high school, Spinoza was presented to us as a kind of cautionary tale: This is what can go wrong if you ask the wrong questions. I was in a school that discouraged one from even going on to college. And philosophy was absolutely the worst thing you could study because it does ask you to question everything. Then there was the Spinoza I came in contact with when I was a professional philosopher. Spinoza is a metaphysician of a very extravagant sort. He wants to deduce everything through pure reason. And that was a kind of philosopher that I was also taught to dismiss and disdain. So both sides of my training -- the orthodox Jewish training, the analytic philosophy training -- pushed me to dismiss Spinoza.

I also like the grandeur of his ambition. He really does believe that we can save ourselves through being rational. And I believe in that. I believe that if we have any hope at all, it's through trying to be rigorously objective about ourselves and our place in the world. We have to do that. We have to submit ourselves to objectivity, to rationality. I think that's what it is about Spinoza. He's just such a rationalist.

Spinoza certainly dismissed the religion he'd been exposed to. Do both of you consider yourselves atheists?

[pause] GOLDSTEIN: Yes.

PINKER: Yes.

GOLDSTEIN: Proud atheists.

PINKER: There, we said it. [Laughs.]

So you have to hesitate for a moment before you use that dirty word?

PINKER: Atheists are the most reviled minority in the United States, so it's no small matter to come out and say it.

I find it puzzling how the recent atheist manifestos by Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens have all turned into bestsellers in a country that's overwhelmingly religious. According to various polls, half of all Americans believe the Bible is the literal truth. A recent Newsweek poll found that 91 percent believe in God. How do you explain the enormous popularity of these books?

PINKER: Part of it is that the people who buy books -- at least that kind of highbrow trade book -- are not a random sample of the population. The opinions sampled by these polls are probably soft. When people are asked a question, they don't just turn a flashlight into their data bank of beliefs and read out what they see. When people say, "Yes, I believe in God and the Bible," they're kind of saying, "I'm a moral person. I have solidarity with the community of churchgoers that I was brought up in and that I currently belong to." I think that if you were to probe a lot of people's religious opinions, they would not be as religious as the numbers would suggest.

GOLDSTEIN: It would be fascinating, though, to see a poll of the people who are buying the new atheist books and see how they are answering these questions.

PINKER: Well, the question often arises whether these authors are preaching to the choir. Especially since these books make no concessions toward religious sensibilities. It's a full-throated intellectual assault on the concept of God. My sense is that the books are really not aimed at the 91 percent of the people you cited who believe in God, but rather at some minority of people who are wavering, who've been brought up in a religious way but now have some private doubts. They perhaps think that confessing to being an atheist is like confessing to being a child molester. So they're not willing to even think those thoughts. Then they come across a book that seems to vindicate all of their doubts. And that tortured minority of reflective, analytic people from a religious background -- perhaps like Rebecca from her religious background -- are who the books are aimed at. Julia Sweeney's one-woman show, "Letting Go of God," would be representative of the kind of person whose mind could be changed by a book like that. 

Musmeah Yeshua Synagogue, Rangoon

A few years back I received a group email that linked to a chart listing the number of Jews in every nation in the world. The two figures that most blew my mind were those representing the number of Jews in Iran: 20,000, and the number of Jews in Afghanistan: 1. The first number surprised me because I had no idea so many Jews remained in Iran after the Revolution. The second number gripped me on a purely existential level. I imagined, rather dramatically, this lone Jew living out his days against a monochrome landscape of bleached sand and rubble, without a single co-religionist in sight. Practically a sci-fi existence.

The chart linked to this guy’s story, and I was pretty fascinated. For a while there was one other Jew in the country, but the two fought over a bible and became hateful enemies. Then the second to last Jew in Afghanistan died. You can read more about the last Jew in Afghanistan here.

I just came across another interesting statistic, though. There are twenty Jews left in Burma. Their mini-community is in the capital, Rangoon, and they occasionally celebrate holidays with Buddhist monks. Here’s Ynet News on what it’s been like for them lately:

"These are the saddest Rosh Hashana and Sukkot we've had in a very long time… we had to adjust the prayer services to the military's curfew, the streets are crawling with soldiers and the situation here is very unstable. The Jews, like many others here, fear for their lives," said Samuels.

The tensions between the military junta and Buddhist monks have made the Jewish community take extra precautions and they have recently hired a private security company, to guard Yangon's only synagogue.

"The unrest here makes it hard for us to even find the quorum needed for prayers," said Samuels. "There are usually a lot of tourists here this time of year, but this year, because of the riots, there are very few of them. Everywhere you look all you see are people rushing home," he added.

"We all pray that the UN negotiations will help restore the peace and quiet to this country," the article quotes one of the twenty as saying. Pray, indeed. Today, China’s ambassador came out against sanctions, and Burma’s ambassador said he can’t understand why there would be need for international action of any kind. Once again, we witness U.N. paralysis at the hands of sinister opportunists treated as statesmen.

Here’s to justice for the Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, and all other good people of Burma.

I’d be lying if I told you I didn’t groan and shift in my chair when I read the following first line from a transcript of a Chicago television news show broadcast yesterday: “A southwest suburban school district has taken action, responding to the concerns of a Muslim parent.”

I envisioned a schoolhouse renovation involving footbath facilities or a plan to excise the Holocaust from social studies class. The first of which is occurring on the university level in this country, and the second of which has occurred in England.

However, then came the next line: “But now, as CBS 2's Suzanne Le Mignot reports, other parents are angry that traditional school holidays will be renamed or even eliminated.”

Apparently the school district is 30 percent Arab American and things got confusing when a student wanted the school to put up Ramadan decorations. The superintendent decided to strike the set, as it were, and go with no religion in the school. Period.

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[This post by Hinda Mandell is the first in a series of dispatches from Berlin, where she's making good on an international journalism fellowship.]

Ah, to be a Jew in Germany during the High Holidays. It’s filled with so much guilt, symbolism and sausage. My poor mamele.

There is a transfixing quality to Berlin. What is destroyed emerges again – a generalization that can be applied to the living and lived in: people, buildings, and yes, even botany. As I learned on a walking tour today (God bless America and walking tours), the famous boulevard Unter den Linden suffered an aesthetic blow when Hitler ordered the removal of lime trees for which the street is named, to be replaced with a more Fascist look: flagpoles bearing Third Reich swastikas. While the lime trees were subsequently replanted after 12 years of National Socialism, right now they’re still pretty puny looking. And there’s more: The behemoth building that was built to house the Nazi air force known as the Luftwaffe was taken over by Soviets in East Berlin. They transformed it into a government agency espousing propaganda on the opposite end of the ideology spectrum. Today, the building is used by the German government’s Finance Ministry. Talk about recycling.

This takes me back to the High Holidays. A religion that once thrived in Germany, then targeted for annihilation, is now vibrant once more. I geared up for erev Rosh Hashanah by – what else? – checking out the Ritz Carlton at Potsdamer Platz. The now tired chain can be proud of its Berlin manifestation. But exploring the swanky interior soon made me thirsty, and without any water fountains in sight (too low-brow? Too American?) I approached a Ritz Carlton staffer. I said I was parched and he disappeared and then returned with a glass of sparkling water – on a silver platter. They treat Jews well here, I thought.

The Chabad-led service was the real highlight. I might as well have been at an Orthodox outfit back home for all of the crying babies and pre-pubescents who ran through the makeshift shul at the downtown Marriot. Those in attendance comprised a motley Jew-crew of Diaspora tribesmen. Upwards of 85% of the Jewish community in Germany are former Soviet Union Jews whose relation to Judaism was marked by the “J” on their passport and little else. They came to the land of the perpetrators following the collapse of the Soviet Union, because America didn’t want them and they didn’t want Israel. And now – thanks to that “J” and Germany’s interest to nurture a small Jewish community – the FSU Jews are living here as privileged refugees. This means that in addition to government handouts of about 400 euros each month, they also receive government-subsidized housing. This also means that these FSU Jews suffer in reputation. A German-born Jew who works for a government ministry here told me that Russian Jews come to the synagogue only for the free grub.

That wasn’t the case at the Marriot – the only hotel in Berlin with a kosher kitchen, I was told – where I paid heftily. Forty euros (about $65) got me 25 minutes of prayer time, a lamb dinner and a severed fish head in front of my plate. My tablemate, a Brazilian Jew who is an advertising copywriter, was disturbed by something else. “It’s weird hearing a rabbi give a speech [in a language] that Hitler once spoke in,” he said.

That rabbi is none other than Brooklynite Yehuda Teichtel, who recently made headlines when his $6.8 million Jewish community center opened to much fanfare last month. It was reported to be the first such center since the Holocaust. It even boasts a replica of the Wailing Wall made with imported Jerusalem stone. A bit much? For Rabbi Teichtel nothing is too much for reinvigorating Jewish life in Berlin. The rabbi tells our table of American expats, transients and new residents: “That 350 Jews are celebrating Rosh Hashanah just miles away from Hitler’s bunker is amazing.” The bunker, now a gravel-covered parking lot, is around the corner from both the Reichstag parliament and the Memorial for the Murdered Jews of Europe. Yeah, talk about symbolism.

Friend of Jewcy Harlyn Aizley on what to do during the High Holy Days when you’re a non-practicing Jewish lesbian and your wee daughter has just developed an interest in the Russian Orthodox church next door:

The thing about my people is going to temple during the high holidays ain’t easy. You need to belong or you need a ticket or you need someone to invite you. It’s easier to go to church and for a moment I thought maybe we should just go to a church where we could mumble things in Hebrew and secretly be celebrating the Jewish high holidays.

 

Hat tip: Will, my gentile fellow Trot: 

Adam Roberts has written a brilliant satire of the reviews Dawkins' The God Delusion has received from the crumpy faithful. He invites us to imagine that Dawkins had written a book called The Fascism Delusion. Inspired, Swiftian stuff, the success of which can be measured by the gullible comments left on it. First three graphs here (hat tip: Drink-Soaked ex-Trotskyite Popinjays for War):

Only Dawkins, or perhaps his psychiatrist, can say why this subject seems to make him so angry; but he should be advised that the intemperate hostility he exhibits towards his subject is counterproductive. I’ll eat my shiny peaked cap if this book persuades even the most hesitant half-Fascist to renounce his beliefs.

… [Dawkins’s] sense of ‘Fascism’ is lamentably error-strewn. Dawkins has only a superficial knowledge of Mein Kamf Kampf, or the poetry of Marinetti; and he seems entirely ignorant of the much more subtle and intellectually stimulating work of Fascist philosophers such as Hermann Graf Keyserling, Alfred Baeumler, Martin Heidegger, Giovanni Gentile, Rafael Sánchez Mazas, Alain de Benoist and many others. Only somebody who has mastered the complete works of all these thinkers could even conceivably be in a position to advance an anti-Fascist argument. The lack of that necessary body of knowledge fatally undermines Dawkins’s right to attack Fascism in the first place.

Right from the get-go he makes the mistake of talking about ‘Fascism’ as if it were some unified quality. Of course the truth is that there are a great many varieties and flavours of Fascism. Do his generalisations refer to Italian Fascism? Hitlerian fascism? Islamofascism? Falangism? Crypto-Fascism? Brazilian Integralism? It is meaningless to extract an idealised, monolithic ‘fascism’ from this myriad patchwork of human practices, even for polemical purposes. Nor is it right to call Fascism ‘right-wing’ (what about the career of Otto Johann Maximilian Strasser?) or ‘militaristic’ (many Fascists are wholly peaceable).

 

Sunni Islam is undergoing a gigantic tug-of-war – a power struggle – in which competing versions of the religion are facing off against one another. The struggle, with consequences that manifest themselves in terms of dead bodies and violent accusations of heresy, is at its heart, an aesthetic one: how does one arrange the sources of Islam? This article is an effort to catalogue that discussion. It might seem pithy and even irrelevant at time, but the fundamental questions about Islam today – the place of women, the place of minorities, the rights of non-combatants, the limits placed upon the various nation-states, the death penalty of apostasy and blasphemy, censorship, the organization of parliamentary (or one party) systems, Muslim democracy, Muslim republicanism, Islamism, Israel, oil and so on – all hinge on a) whose narrative about how Islam’s sources are arranged emerges victorious, and b) which narrative does the economically and militarily powerful West decide to empower.

The general trend among academics in the West is to list four or five presumably “standard” sources of Islam and then say “well, here are the ones the Salafis do not accept and add, here the ones the Wahhabis do not accept and add” and so on. I suppose academics do this because they see the world in terms of what is normative (within the academy) and not what is normative in terms of power. This is a flawed approach because it presumptively favors one particular brand of orthodox Sunni Muslims – the classic orthodox – which has been getting quite a proverbial beat down at the hand of the Salafis and Wahhabis for over a century. The only reason one would treat them as normative is if one a) truly believes they ought represent normative Islam (I do not), and b) truly believes that their position can address the various questions about Islam today (again, I do not). On the other hand, I am not comfortable with treating Wahhabis and Salafis as normative either – though they would just love that – because a) they do not actually have a unified method, and b) their service to a particular political ideological agenda means that we should be careful from treating them as normative. As such, I will treat only the Quran – which is to Islam what Christ is to Christianity – as normative, and explain the fascinating, contradictory and multifarious ways in which Muslims relate to it, and the massive systems they have created emanating from it. All of this becomes relevant because the fate of a billion people, and all those who are touched by them, depends on it. Pay attention.

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A couple of years ago I had the occasion of meeting a Reconstructionist Rabbi. As we were discussing my philosophy thesis -- which was on Nietzsche and an Indian-Muslim philosopher named Muhammad Iqbal -- the Rabbi shocked me when he said that not only did he know who Iqbal was, but that he was actively studying his works.

I can understand how the Rabbi became aware of Muhammad Iqbal – not only was Iqbal a friend of Bertrand Russell, Alfred Whitehead and Bergson and thus part of early 20th century philosophy – but he wrote a book called “Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam” which describes the religious experience as one that is lived and evolving; an experience that contains movement and change; an experience that borrows from the tradition but is not limited by it. These are principles at the heart of Jewish reconstructionism as well. In light of the fact that I was the only one the Rabbi had ever met who was thoroughly conversant in Iqbal, while the Rabbi was the only non-Muslim I had met who knew Iqbal well, one would imagine that we would spend the entire night talking about the book.

We did talk the whole night, but not about the book. Our conversation became waylayed by violence – not between us, but the reality of terrorism, suicide bombings, and to some extent, honor killings. That conversation, in itself, was quite interesting. I insisted that the violence was problematic per se, that it had no excuses, and to some extent no causes other than the fact that the texts made themselves amenable to such readings. He insisted that Western foreign policy had something to do with Muslim violence.

Yet, now that I think about it, I find it so saddening and depressing that we didn’t get to talk about Iqbal’s book. I get especially melancholy when I think what Iqbal would feel if he found out that eighty years on from his Islam-shaking book, a reconstructionist Rabbi and a reformist Muslim law student, opted to talk about cave-dwelling psychopaths, barbarous patriarchal fathers, and deranged anarchists, instead of talking about the Islamic legal tradition, about “the spirit of movement in Islam,” or, about “the spiritual democracy which is the ultimate aim of Islam.”

Iqbal’s time in the world was an interesting one. It appeared that in reaction against the colonial powers, Muslims had come together, and for the most part, were actively engaged in reconciling republicanism with religion, and liberalism with Islam. They were integrating their minorities; and basing the citizenship of their nations, not on religiosity or perceived piety, but on their shared nation-hood. Iqbal discuses almost all of these ideas in this essay from the Reconstruction, suggesting that Muslims ought to consider making a "League of Muslim nations" which is less concerned with Caliphates and more concerned with their internal well-beings. Yet, today, just a few decades later, various hardline organizations, like the Muslim Brotherhood, the Jamaat e Islami, and the Hizb ut Tahrir, all along with the Wahhabi machine, have created the conditions for a complete breakdown in Islam. Emanating from the fringes of these organizations came the terrorists and anarchists. Today, Iqbal’s vision, which presupposed the perpetuity of stability and peace, has now been replaced by entropy and chaos -- no one knows what will happen. The Sunni Islam of Iqbal's era -- which could give rise to nation-states -- seems to be teetering. The things that people who take interest in Islam talk about are, deplorably shameful, both in their content and quality. Suicide? Collateral Damage? Noncombatant immunity? Iqbal thought that none of these would ever be issues, so that when you read him, eighty years ago, he neither addresses them, nor conceives of their possibility.

Therefore, in that sense, Islamic “reform” appears to have gone backwards. Right?

But here is my conundrum, the more that I think about it, the less I can blame the reformists. It is not as if Islam ceased to produced liberal reformists of Iqbal’s ilk. There was Fazlur Rahman, and Muhammad Shahrour, and Amin Ahsan Islahi, and Abullahi an-Naim, and today Javed Ahmad Ghamidi, and a vast collection of second tier reformers, situated in hundreds of universities all across the world, all of whom have been emphasizing and re-emphasizing the themes that Iqbal set forth. Why has the influence of these people waned? Why isn’t Iqbal’s monumental poetic compendium -- he is also considered the greatest of two Indian poets of the 20th century -- on the lips of Muslims today like it was one hundred years ago?

Many people like to ask the question “what went wrong with Islam” and look back to colonialism or all the way back to the Mongol invasion. My submission is quite simple: sometime in the early third of the 20th century Islam was going to be OK; but something went wrong between 1935 and 2001. Why, today, when we should be talking about how Muslim states can better organize their systems, are we talking about non-state people, lone suicidal wolves, mercenary killers, and thugs? Western foreign policy clearly has something to do with the problem. It isn't the sole cause though, because as I've pointed out numerous times, fanatics pre-dated 20th century Western political hegemony (this time its American rather than British), and would post-date it even if the US were to remove all of our military bases. Still, when I see articles like this one (see the one on Iran), and consider the fact that even I, an extreme skeptic towards reformist successes, can't always blame reformists for not doing enough, I have to take a step back. Why are liberals, and conservatives, who care about Islamic reform, so unwilling to accept blame for our policies? If it is reasonable to expect that Chomsky speak out against Islamic radicals, I think it is extremely reasonable to expect that hawks, liberals, and conservatives stop creating a world which feeds, breeds, perpetuates violence.

Does anyone now doubt that Osama bin Laden routinely scans U.S. newspapers and magazines, searching for his half-baked appeals to the American people to see him not as a theocratic fascist but as a sort of misunderstood uncle whose punishments hurt him more than they hurt them? Binny's latest proclamation is well worth reading, less so for its allusions to Noam Chomsky or Michael Scheuer, but for its revivalist salesmanship to good, God-fearing Christians. Would it be such a shock to the system for them to "embrace" Islam?

And did you know that the name of the Prophet of Allah Jesus and his mother (peace and blessings of Allah be on them both) are mentioned in the Noble Quran dozens of times, and that in the Quran there is a chapter whose name is "Maryam," i.e. Mary, daughter of Imran and mother of Jesus (peace and blessings of Allah be upon them both)? It tells the story of her becoming pregnant with the Prophet of Allah Jesus (peace and blessings of Allah be uon them both), and in its confirmation of her chastity and purity, in contrast to the fabrications of the Jews against her.

One has to the admire the "inter-faith" cosiness of this passage, and Christians should indeed look up the chapter "Maryam" and the other dozen references to her, mainly to see if they recognize their blessed virgin in the Koranic recounting.

In sura 19.28, 29, Mary is approached by the people of Nazareth and told, "O Mary, now you have done an extraordinary thing! O sister of Aaron! Your father was not a bad man, nor was your mother a whore!" In sura 66,12; 3.31, Mary is referred to as the "daughter of Imran," as Bin Laden refers to her above. Still later the reader is informed that "We gave unto Moses the Book and appointed him his brother Aaron as vizier."

Those with Sunday School, let alone Hebrew School, backgrounds might be scratching their heads at this point. As the great atheist Ibn Warraq puts it in one of his countless examples showing the Koran's manmade and highly fallible origins,

It is pretty obvious that Muhammed has confused Miriam the sister of Moses, with Mary the mother of Jesus.

Surely a sacrilege to pious Christians, since Miriam was struck with a nasty case of leprosy -- albeit the virginally-tinged kind that turned her "white as snow" -- for speaking Lashon hara against Moses' Cushite bride. And though she was considered a prophetess -- incidentally, one much adored by today's Jewish feminists, not the usual demo for Al Qaeda recruitment -- it's quite clear that she was not immaculately conceived or assumed into heaven with her body and soul united.

What an exegetical pickle. These confusions and more could be easily remedied if jihadists abandoned the text-literal monotheism altogether and stuck to a more "open source" script, like Borat's Kazakh metaphysic. "We follow the hawk."

Right on, man.

I think Danya Ruttenberg kicks ass for many reasons, but chiefly, today, I think Danya kicks ass because of her response to Matthue Roth's letter to the editor in the latest issue of glorious Bitch Magazine.

See, in last month's issue of Bitch, Ruttenberg wrote briefly about the mechitza in the context of a discussion about "women-only spaces". "A divider separates men and women in Orthodox synagogues because a visible female presence is considered a sexual threat at a time when the (male) Jewish subject should be focusing on his prayers," she says, in part.

In response, this month, an offended Roth opines:

As a rabbinical student, Ruttenberg should be aware that the purpose of a mechitza is not becuase "a visible female presence is considered a sexual threat" as she claims, but, according to the Talmud (tractate Sukkah,page 51b), in order for everyone to focus on the ceremony at hand. There's no mention of anyone, least of all women, being considered a sexual threat -- except, that is, when she writes "the (male) subject should be focusing on his prayers." Visible female presences are all over Orthodox Judaism, from Miriam and Devorah in the Bible to Orthodox women like Blu Greenberg, Tziporah Heller, and the First Belz Rebbetzin. Praying isn't supposed to be a natural experience. It's actually supposed to make you feel unnatural, so that [you] turn away from the world around you and get closer to G-d.

Could I disagree with Roth any more ferociously? (No, I could not.) What kind of bizarre-o, bullshit assertion is "praying isn't supposed to be a natural experience"? What kind of exclusionary, off-putting absurdity is that? It's an adherence to religion utterly devoid of spirituality or organic wisdom, if you ask me. And, uh, hauling out a few random names of women who appear in the Bible alongside a few random names of women who've indeed existed within Orthodox Judaism does not an argument about the role of women in Orthodoxy make, buddy. Also? Way to avoid the real issue.

But Ruttenberg has the rabbinic chops to respond in a more level-headed manner, which she does thusly:

Sukkah 51b refers to a specific event that no longer takes place; Maimondeds, the Meiri, the Rosh, and others suggest that it wasn't indicative of how worship should be in a post-Temple era. There's no mention of gendered partitions for regular prayer until the medieval period, in Seder Eliyahu Raba: "nor should a man stand among the presence of women." Women are the objects/distraction to male experience. Some, including R. Joseph Soloveichik, justify mechitza through Deuteronomy 23:15, "Let (God) not find something unseemly among you." In the Torah, this verse is about ritual impurity. Here women are the unseemly problem to expel from male ritual space. Is the mechitza gender neutral? No. It's offensive to suggest that the mechitza is fine for transfolk. Having to "pick a side" will create and enforce rigid gender binaries like nothing else. As for queers, defenders of mechitza generally presume heterosexuality -- it's about removing sexual temptation during prayer. Learning to become absorbed in coversation with God, regardless of who's around, is a hallmark of spritual maturity. Service to God doesn't come at the expense of anyone else's subjecthood or wholeness.

Pump your fists in the air with me, will you? Beautifully put, Danya.

This issue, from a queer standpoint, was also quite eloquently argued by Aaron Hamburger in Jewcy a few months back, by the way.

(Patriarchal, chauvinistic, misogynistic, knee-jerk Bible-thumpers, start your engines.)

 

Leave it to Team Chosen to pitch a curveball at the wall that separates church and state. There's a new public school in Florida called Ben Gamla. It's a Hebrew charter school, which means Floridian tax dollars pay for it and it technically can't teach religion to its students, who technically don't have to be Jewish to enroll.

About 400 students started classes at Ben Gamla this week amid caustic debate over whether a public school can teach Hebrew without touching Judaism and the unconstitutional side of the church-state divide. The conflict intensified Wednesday, when the Broward County School Board ordered Ben Gamla to suspend Hebrew lessons because its curriculum — the third proposed by the school — referred to a Web site that mentioned religion.

Opponents say that it is impossible to teach Hebrew — and aspects of Jewish culture — outside a religious context, and that Ben Gamla, billed as the nation’s first Hebrew-English charter school, violates one of its paramount legal and political boundaries.

I hope the school gets sued because I have a few friends who need new material for Law Review. At some point practical considerations intrude upon the most dogmatic adherence to the church-state divide, don't they? A school in the wondrously named city of Hollywood, Florida has Hebrew as a foreign language requirement and must now vet every textbook for eyebrow-raising allusions to shofars, red heifers, or mezzuzot. Can the kids at least get sour cream with their spaghetti in the cafeteria?

Frankly, I never minded reading about religion in my public high school: We were taught the Bible as it was written, as fiction. No one freaked. And even Latin instruction couldn't wend its way completely around mention of Zeus, the pantheon or the oracle at Delphi. Learning a dead language means learning about the people who spoke it and where they thought lightning and floods came from. (All right, Hebrew isn't "dead." But that Rome today is the homeland of a Catholic mini-theocracy instead of a sexually permissive republic with George Clooney haircuts bums you, me and Edward Gibbon to no end.)

If the modern world weren't filled with such pea-brained and pedantic Pecksniffs, we might watch comfortably as a handful of black Pentecostalists at Ben Gamla got to scan, in the original, a bit of antique folklore known as the Torah.

James Baldwin would have been cool with that.

The New Republic has an interesting profile of an evangelical priest who converted to Orthodox Christianity because of his disatisfaction with the frivolousness of evangelical ritual.  I couldn't help but notice a certain synchronicity at work.

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