I’m fairly sure I know how this will play. There will be a lot of commentary on it criticizing it because, well, it’s the UK. Even though Jews have lived securely and freely in the UK for a very long time, the history of the British Mandate hangs in the air. Plus, there’s no mistaking the rhetorical war by the more right-wing elements of American Jewry and in Israel against each and every European country these days—some of it deserved, some of it not. They will say that this decision is oppressive because it forces a non-Jewish definition of Jewishness on Jews.

If that’s what it were, those comments would have a basis in fact. But there are a few details that might be missed here. First, this is not just a private school. It is a quasi-public school. It is a state-funded “faith school” in question here. Whether that changes your mind or not, it should at least be a relevant fact, and it is not in The Forward’s article. To be fair, none of the articles quote extensively from or link to the actual court decision, which is from the new Supreme Court of the UK, which just started in October as a replacement for the House of Lords.

The decision is here: Decision. [pdf] Please read it for yourself and tell me if you think it is free of religious concern.

All it says is that the Orthodox chief rabbinate has no monopoly on the determination of Jewish status for purposes of a state-funded school. This is not that different than the law in Israel, where the secular government recognizes a broader view of Jewish status for purposes of the Law of Return, even if the chief rabbinate has authority over other status issues. But, no doubt, this policy will be criticized even though, on the merits, its virtually identical to what Israel itself does because it’s the UK doing it.

To repeat: this is not allowing Muslims in a private Jewish school. It is allowing a religious Jewish boy, born of a Jewish mother who converted to attend a state-funded school that has the freedom to teach Torah values notwithstanding its state funding. What is even more compelling to me is that the new test for admission will actually be based on religious observance tests instead of simply parentage:

Concern has been expressed that the majority decision will compel Jewish faith schools to admit children whom the Jewish religion does not recognise as being Jewish, that is children who are not descended from Jews by the maternal line. It is not clear that this is so. As a result of the decision of the Court of Appeal the JFS has published a new admission policy for admission in September 2010. This applies a test of religious practice, including “synagogue attendance, Jewish education and/or family communal activity”.

(R v Governing Body of JFS [2009] UKSC 15, p. 18.) Tell me what’s more important to creating an environment of Torah values? The dunce child of an accidental Jew or the observant child of a Jew by choice.

Oh and just in case you have to go there, the conversion was not a whatever-pejorative-term-you-want-to-apply-to-it Reform conversion. It was a Masorti, and therefore halakhic, conversion. It is also not ordering the Orthodox rabbinate to recognize the child as a Jew, or ordering them to change their standards for conversion.
For those of you used to the shallow logic, cherry-picking of facts, and transparent results-based thinking of so many American court opinions, I think you’ll find the UK Supreme Court’s opinion refreshing. Also, on the alleged narrowness of the decision, Rabbi Romain:

It is rather distasteful that the JFS has been defended by a press release claiming the supreme court decision was by “the narrowest of margins” ie 5-4. This is spin. In reality, five judges found it was guilty direct discrimination, two of indirect discrimination and two of no discrimination.

Legally you cannot have both direct and indirect discrimination simultaneously, hence the 5-4 vote, but morally you could say that it was a 7-2 verdict declaring that JFS was guilty of discrimination in one form or another.

UPDATE:

Heeb has an abortion of a take here. I guess they aren’t interested in Judaism.

The New York Times has a report here. It erroneously reports—or at least misleadingly—states that the woman in question’s conversion was “progressive.” I think that usually means Reform to most people. Here, the conversion was Masorti, which is something in between Conservative and Modern Orthodox in terms of the US. In other words, it was a halakhic conversion.

His answer to me was (I can’t remember verbatim): if you’re in a corner with everyone around you holding a knife to your neck, you’ll take help from anywhere. He also added that the Jewish people were very smart and knew what they were dealing with.

Personally, I don’t think the situation is that desperate. I think U.S. support for Israel’s security is unwavering, even if our government disagrees from time to time with some of their actions.

While I respectfully disagree with the Rabbi, I understand his argument and I don’t dismiss it. Personally, I am strongly Pro-Israel, and have been for my entire life, and I am skeptical of a Palestinian state because I cannot see what their economy will be based on, so I’m not defending what happened in Sweden…

…but, I was surprised to receive a “mass e-mail” from a local synagogue with a link to a Pat Robertson “news” segment on an incident in Sweden, where an event had to be shut down due to security concerns over the Israeli tennis team visiting. Obviously not all Jews are keyed in to what they are dealing with. Robertson begins the segment by taking potshots as Sweden, of course. That’s what the whole segment is really about: not about standing up for the Israelis, but taking shots at a country that he sees as a collection of infidels and socialists. How can that not be obvious to anyone who knows what Robertson is and what he’s about?

I don’t deny that there have been some disturbing anti-Israel actions going on lately in Europe, but to judge Sweden—a country that helped save Jews from the Nazis—on the basis of a few kooky protesters is to engage in the same kind of xenophobic typecasting that Israel’s enemies do towards Israel. I have been to Sweden. I have (distant) relatives who live in Sweden and close relatives who are Swedish. They are just like anyone else: they have differing views on everything. They are not a monolith. The right wing is using our unfamiliarity with Europe to convince us that they all hate Israel. Odd then that the EU recently backed Israel’s play on Palestine declaring statehood, and a Norwegian university board voted unanimously against an Israel boycott, which are not uncommon in the United States! (Even among some Christian denominations, who are supposedly our big backers here.) Unless you believe in antisemitism’s own myths of secret Jewish power, these actions must represent a non-unanimity of opinion (at least) in those countries.

In fact, I find this especially hard to swallow because this kind of thing goes on in the United States all the time. Have you been to a college campus *anytime* anything to do with Israel comes up? My undergrad college, which began known as a school for Jewish girls, was by my time, was ultra-left wing on everything yet was sharply divided on this issue. I could never understand how liberals could support the fundamentalism of the Islamists. I also cannot understand how Jews can support Christian fundemantalists—these people think we killed their god, you know?! They think we are all going to hell. They think we have tails and horns.

I wouldn’t want to be an Israeli coming to speak at a U.S. college, yet the U.S. is easily Israel’s strongest ally. So, we’re passing around cheap shots at Sweden because something that just as easily could have happened in any number of places happened there. This is exactly the kind of thinking, as I mentioned, that people use to attack Israel in the US. The US is responsible for the slaughter of hundreds of times more innocents than the Israelis, and we do it in countries across oceans. Yet many Americans smugly sit in judgment of the situation in Israel’s backyard. That’s just as ignorant and xenophobic as Robertson’s attack on Sweden.

I’m happy to read news about antisemitism, but the last thing I expect is Pat Robertson in my inbox being sent by my synagogue.

Update: THIS is what I’m talking about. Sarah Palin: “More and more Jewish people will be flocking to Israel in the days and weeks and months ahead…” Why? Because, of course, she thinks we all go there to die right before the end of the world. Read the quote in this article from a guy at Liberty University, you know, the bastion of those evangelicals who we need to defend Israel…

This is a condition for the second regathering, the regathering in belief, when the Jewish nation is converted. Then there will be the battle of Armageddon, because remember, Satan wants to wipe out the Jews to prevent the Second Coming, but Jesus comes to rescue the beleaguered Jews. We believe that the Jews are going to be converted so that they can call on Jesus to rescue them from Satan.

Podhoretz got the question bass ackward. It’s not why are so many Jews liberals, it’s why are any Jews associated with the Religious Right and their enablers?

…and of course, I think it goes without saying that viral e-mails like that originate inside the evangelical institutions, who, along with Neoconservatives, are trying to wedge Jewish voters against Democrats by bamboozling them into believing that Barack Hussein Obama is going to sell out Israel. Why not try it? This kind of wedge politics has worked very well getting lower income Christians to vote for policies that hurt them over single issues like abortion or gay marriage. Too bad for them 78% of Jews aren’t buying it.

Update 2: Here’s an article on Pat Robertson slandering Jewish Sabbath services. Here’s info on his book repeating the antisemitic line about Jewish conspiracies. Here’s an article also on the conspiracy theories but also about how Robertson targets Jews for conversion.

I will confess that there is a certain crossword-puzzle-like attraction to reconciling the text with science of all kinds: Genesis with cosmology, Exodus, Joshua, and Samuel with archaeology and other written sources, trying to explain parts of Exodus through vulcanism and other geological events, etc.

And while I’m not specifically accusing Rabbi Shafner of engaging in those attempts, I think that these attempts in general are both belittling to science and to the Tradition.

If you read B’reshit/Genesis as a “literal” account of the origins of the universe, i.e. as a Cosmological treatise, it is simply not correct according to science. If you, on the other hand, read it for what it is: a theological, ethical, etiological, and anthropological document, woven together with the traditions of the Ancient Near East from which the fundamentals of the beliefs of half the world’s peoples spring, then not only is there no need to call it false, but there is reason to wonder at it.

In other words, I don’t think the Torah is trying to tell us something like E=MC^2. I think the Torah is trying to tell us that there is one God: that the primordial water is not a god, in contrast to Mesopotamian belief; that chaos was not a god, in contrast to Mesopotamian belief; and that the sun and the firmament are not gods. Most importantly, it tells us that humans are dignified because they are made in God’s image.

This latter bit can be read also as a biological document. Boom! There’s a man. Or it can be read as an ethical document. Humans are part of “creation”—part of the world—and are thus deserving of human dignity, as they are—at least so far—the highest expression of nature on earth. You can agree or disagree with that last claim, but I think that’s the one being made. I do not think this is a biology text. And in fact, if you reject that claim, you are more or less rejecting monotheism, which, at the bare minimum holds that there is a primum mobile is what began, and it is singular. If you can’t even entertain (even if you can’t believe it) that notion, you probably don’t belong in a temple or a church in the first place, and shouldn’t bother reading the Torah anyway.

[Edit: God making man in his image could also be seen as a sort of in-your-face reversal of men making gods in their image: the idols prevalent all over the Ancient Near East.]

Textualists tell us that this part of the Bible is part of the P source. That author was very concerned with orthodoxy. I think that in the context of the first millennium BC, the P author expresses the orthodoxy of monotheism and ethics very well in the open part of B’reshit/Genesis and there is no need to come up with explanatory hacks like “before the sun the days could have been millions of years long!”

In sum, this is the fallacy of taking the Bible “literally”: you’re taking it literally on your own 21st century terms, probably in translation to another language, but at least into an entirely different gestalt. Just by doing that, you’re setting it up to fail.

Try reading it on its own terms from its own time. It’s a brilliant text when you don’t expect it to explain Gauss’s formulas or DNA replication.

A Holocaust researcher in New York uncovered documents which show that David Ben-Gurion and the Zionist leadership in pre-state Israel had urged the Allies to bomb Auschwitz once they had learned that they were in fact death camps and not labor camps as was previously thought.

I don’t know where this goes, what it means, etc. Was is the effect of the bombing/non-bombing? Is this Monday-morning quarterbacking, or does this have some real significance for Jewish history? Is it to suggest that the Allied conduct of the war was antisemitic? This particular point of history appears so often that it cannot just be a piece of history for history’s sake. It has to have an agenda. If you can explain this to me, send me an email.

Do people really not even want to handle their own consciences anymore? Law is not morality, yet it is depended upon by the people of this nation to resolve moral disputes – a system which doles out its peculiar brand of equality via monetary compensation – as antithetical to morality as lemon juice is to sugar. Citizens of this great nation should not have to make the stark choice between morality and monetary success.

It’s a common lament in our post-modern era. I’m not sure what triggered this particular thought, but that’s part of the fun of blogging. I’m going to unpack this paragraph a little bit and then comment.

First, we’re asked if people want to handle their own consciences “anymore”? In the context of the following words, it sounds like the chief complaint is that our moral life has been reduced, via the legal system, to a monetary exchange, and that this is done in order to avoid moral responsibility through payment.

Second, the last sentence seems to indicate that morality is precluded by monetary success and vice versa. This last is a wholly different claim than the first part of the sentence, and without further color, I can only speculate as to the connection.

Here’s what I would say: I know of no period in human history when people wanted to go out of their way to take responsibility for their actions. As history drifts backwards into nothing but stories of important men, it’s easy to lose this perspective because often times exemplary men who are worth writing down in history are moral exemplars, at least in their own cultural milieu. But what I would agree is happening is that moral sloth is expanding into our public discourse, even while it’s hard to know if it’s better or worse on the private level. And by “our” I mean in America. This is a fairly universal syndrome of civilizations that have passed their youthful period, like ours.

Money has been blamed for just about every problem there is. We blame it for the moral abominations done to people and the planet by certain large corporations, for the government’s corruption, and for any number of criminal acts. But this is idolatry, is it not? Are we really so powerless in the face of a few pieces of paper, electrons in a bank’s computer, or a piece of metal? The blame lies with ourselves.

The trouble is, or at least the unique trouble to our current public life in America, is that we are untethered from a moral code. And by “moral code” I don’t mean merely religious law. In fact, some religious laws, like homphobic ones, have only contributed to the moral skepticism of so many. What used to be a code for moral behavior seems to trip up some deeper moral compass. Same goes for money. We don’t want to be greedy, but we must feed our families, right?

What I would suggest is that what appears as moral sloth is actually a rapid acceleration of the number of moral dilemmas that people face in an increasingly interconnected world, and the stunning power of aggregation that our acts may have. Our choice to buy a certain product, coupled with the millions of others who buy it, may actually have a historical impact on the world. Our choice not to do so in protest may leave us feeling helpless in the face of the aggregated power that is doing so.

In other words, we’re under the microscope a lot more because we actually are making decisions of huge moment every moment, whose effects can skitter across the globe like the “butterfly effect” that may have attenuated away in a less connected world.

I still think there are fairly good goalposts for moral behavior that we have received from centuries of traditions. It requires study to see how these traditions apply today, but they are there.

It would mean that my culture, my home, and my world were blotted out. America has not—to use language from Deuteronomy—always chosen life. America has a tendency to behave nastily. We have yet to completely grapple with the legacy of slavery, even though we try sometimes. We don’t even try much to deal with the annihilation of Native American cultures. It would mean that open societies collapse under the weight of difference and that hope for humanity is limited by tribalism. It would mean that the inventions of our economic system can only lead to an implosion of greed.

We have waged war on innocent nations and killed thousands. We have propped up dictatorial regimes in the Muslim world and in Latin America. We have done a lot of things wrong to our neighbors and to our selves.

But would a latter day Cato be justified in saying America delenda est? No.

Similarly, whatever we may or may not like about Israel, or in particular its government, there is simply no debating the question of its right to exist. It would be a crime against the world. For all of the bumps along the way, and for all of the hyperbole, Israel is the only real democracy in the region. People of all different backgrounds can and do live there.

Israel is a testament to all the suffering peoples of the world—even the Palestinians—that there is justice in the world. That a people dispersed by mightier peoples can find refuge and live again. That wondering is not forever. Think about the Tibetans exiled in India. It is possible for them to go home one day. We’ve shown it’s possible.

Every country has its sins, but some have a special promise. America has usually been able to turn around from its bad times and surprise us. I think Israel can and will too. But even if they didn’t that’s no justification for violence.

Every country needs reform. Some might require revolution, but none should be annihilated.

You can’t possibly say that there is apartheid within rump Israel. Must I expound? OK. There are not separate highways for Arabs, or walls dividing off neighborhoods of Haifa. Arabs have political parties, the vote, and have MKs.

So, if that’s not the contention, if the contention is that this is the status in the West Bank (do these folks really mean to say that the West Bank is “in” Israel?) is one of apartheid, I still disagree. Apartheid did not include something like the Palestinian Authority, and the question of two states coming about is very different—in the goal were a one-state solution, then apartheid might be on the menu, but if there are to be two… are there any two countries in the world where there is zero restriction on movement etc. between the two? Norway and Sweden maybe? I think you just go past a sign.

OK, so moving along.

I bring this up because of this post by (h/t Dana Goldstein) labeling two parties: post-zionists and neo-zionists. (Are the Wikipedia entries up yet?)

It leads me to ask this: if there is a final status two-state solution, what will be the rights of Jews in Palestine? In theory, it would be, of course, full civil rights. Is there some fear this won’t be the case? (ok, I know that—that’s implied in everything.)

So the result will be a Palestinian state with dhimmis and Israel with equal rights, but with an established religion and a magen david on the flag. I think I’d rather be an Arab in Israel than a Jew in Palestine.

So, the final treaty, I think should include some kind of statement on the rights (de jure and de facto) of both.

So, a lot of people were pissed about the Jewish Agency ad decrying 50% of Jews “assimilating.” So, of course, there has to be someone telling us why the complaints were wrong, but maybe for slightly more snobby or intellectual reasons that we mere mortals thought at first. It’s the Slate magazine theory of public debate.

Right on cue, enter Jack Wertheimer in the Forward.

Wertheimer says we shouldn’t be so quick to dismiss this idea; that it’s something we need to talk about; that all of this talk about the institutions being the cause of the failure is bologna (n.b. Wertheimer is a professor at JTS); and that it’s because arguments about Jewish survival have become “passé.”

Wertheimer lost me for good with that comment. Assimilation is not equivalent to the industrialized murder of millions. If the last chapter of the history of the Jews ends “and they loved their wives and took up their wives’ religion” it’s a far cry from “they were shot to death for their beliefs.”

How can any Jew draw this equivalence? Any human being? We have the human right both to be free from being murdered, but also we have the human right to assimilate. I don’t suggest we do so, I would try to talk someone out of it, but I don’t think there is no right to do it.

I know very well that only about 33% choose to affiliate with a movement or attend a synagogue. This does not mean the other 67% are being trucked off to execution. (And isn’t Reform and Masorti basically “assimilation” as far as many are concerned, anyway?)

There was an article in the Forward earlier this year saying maybe if there was something to do at Jewish institutions besides talk about the Shoah and Israel, people would come more. I love history. I believe Israel should be a Jewish state, but I have a limit about how much I want to talk about it. Some of it is depressing, frustrating, and can make friends argue.

I maintain that a positive Jewish message will attract Jews. Don’t cross-examine them on the last time they laid tefillin or where they got that last piece of meat. Or if they’ve talked to God recently.

Ask them if they want to talk about how we can help out the world and our community by thinking of things in a Jewish way. Doing mitzvot and practicing tikkun olam. A purpose, not a straightjacket.

Of course there are places that do that and don’t do what I’m accusing them of. But, really, can it be denied that widely?

At least until recently. They have revoked that change.

From a doctrinal point of view, of course, this idea is mostly nonsense in the first place. Christian scripture provides only a very few vague statements to hang the dual covenant hat on. Plus, from a Catholic point of view, it’s the Church’s interpretation that matters. (Just as within Judaism, it is is the interpretation of the Rabbis that matters—unless you count Karaites.) The Vatican affirmed this change, which probably only conforms it with their real canons anyway. From the Jewish point of view, it’s self defeating. If you admit there are two covenants, then you essentially make Judaism just a Christian sect.

Doctrine aside, this has a political significance. I have always seen “dual covenant” theology as a sort of cognitive tactic to foster tolerance. Since at all points for the last 1700 years, Christian tolerance of Jews has been a more impactful question than the reverse, there is some sense in putting this out there. It probably has created some tolerance among some people.

It’s more problematic for Catholics who are told how to interpret the Bible. Other Christians may choose to read the words, in particular, in Deuteronomy quite literally and agree that God’s deal with the Jews is permanent, messiah or no messiah.

Again, I’m digressing into doctrine. This, along with the restoration antisemitic Easter prayers and other statements mentioned in the article I linked to above, show that Catholic-Jewish relations have peaked. Is it too cynical to me to suggest that this corresponds with the waning of influence of the Holocaust generation?

I think there is. A bevy of post-holocaust scholars like Rosemary Radford Reuther argued that there was nothing intrinsic about the early Christian movement that made it anti-Judaic or anti-Semitic, and place the blame not on the theology, but on the practitioners. As one of my graduate professors put it, this is part of the Christian exercise of trying to deal with the Holocaust and the fact of Christian culpability for it. (Much like the assertion that Nazism was a pagan faith, which, while arguably true, is misleading because just about all Nazis were Christians.)

Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe this is a temporary setback. Maybe other Christian groups will lead the charge towards a massive detente between the faiths. After all, I think the Catholic church is erroneously taken to be the only authentic face of Christianity among many Jewish scholars. But somehow I doubt that.

Popular Christianities today exude images more like Sarah Palin than the Rev. Martin Luther King. They are becoming more fundamentalist, not less. Fortunately, that fundamentalism is more in reaction to secularism than it is to other faiths. Secularism is the major boogeyman for the fundamentalists of all faiths today. As a result, while the doctrines harden, the priorities shift from the incorrect believers to the non-believers.

In practicality, this change in the Catechism probably won’t have many results. But if it signals a post-post-Holocaust era in Christian thinking on a broader level, then, especially coupled with the generally antsy mood of our country, it could mean more nutjobs doing nutty things.

Apropos of the holiday, I have been rooting through Tractate Rosh Hashana. I own a very few Talmud books, but I have an entire English set on my computer and the Hebrew is online, so I print out parts and make notes in the margins.

The first Mishnah is about the four different new years. On daf 3a, the Amoraim argue over conflicting texts in Haggai and Ezra regarding the beginning of the regnal year. The question is whether non-Jewish kings have begin their regnal years at the beginning of the month of Nissan. Basically, it appears that he is treated both ways, one way in Haggai and one way in Ezra.

Rav Joseph says there is no contradiction because one verse speaks of him before he “denigrated” (Soncino translation) or “fermented”—turned to vinegar, so to speak—and another after. It also means “leavened” like flour with yeast.

If referring to Cyrus’s regnal year beginning as if he were Jewish really is some kind of honor, and if he lost it through some act, it’s an interesting idea.

American Presidents have aged very differently. Truman left office in disgrace with approval as low as Nixon when he resigned or the second Bush at his nadir, despite presiding over the end of World War II and his whistle-stop narrow victory in 1948. Yet his reputation has largely been rehabilitated.

The reverse, of course, has also occurred. Presidents have turned to vinegar during the course of their term in office and have turned themselves back into wine. President Clinton was impeached by Congress, but left office with the highest approval ratings of any president in decades. Clinton also practically lost control of the government after the 1994 elections only to win reelection in 1996.

The Amoraim of the Gemara would not have given or withheld the title of “worthy” from a king based on policy minutia. It probably would have been the result of one or two major things that he did. One huge bold and positive historical stroke can make up for a steady flow of more minor blunders—here, I think of Reagan’s instincts ultimately causing the collapse of the Soviet Union as his defining moment, not Iran-Contra or his announcement that he was running for president at the site of a vicious civil rights conflict.

Another thing to think about is this: if it is wine when you drink it, who cares if it turns to vinegar? Similarly, what consolation is it to the people who lived through a vinegary era that we can now feast on the wine?

History may be the ultimate judge, but a worthy ruler will also attend to the needs of those he serves at the time.

R. Joseph sought to disprove [the statement that the years of non-Israelitish kings are reckoned from Tishri, as follows]: [It is written], In the four and twentieth day of the month, in the sixth month, in the second year of Darius the king, and it is further written, In the seventh month in the second year in the one and twentieth day of the month. Now if it is [as you say], then we should have here ‘in the seventh month in the third year’! — R. Abbahu replied: Cyrus was a worthy king, and therefore they reckoned his years like those of the kings of Israel.

R. Joseph demurred strongly against this [last notion]. For one thing [he said, if this is so,] then there is a contradiction between two biblical texts. For it is written, And the house was finished on the third day of the month of Adar, which was the sixth year of Darius the king, and in connection with this it has been taught: ‘At that period, in the year following, Ezra went up from Babylon along with his band of exiles’. Now it is written further, And he [Ezra] came to Jerusalem in the fifthmonth, which was in the seventh year of the king; and if it is [as you say], it should be ‘in the eighth year’? Further, is there any connection [between your answer and the question]? You speak of Cyrus and the text speaks of Darius! — It has been taught: ‘Cyrus, Darius, and Artaxerxes were all one. He was called Cyrus because he was a worthy king; Artaxerxes after his realm; while Darius was his own name. All the same, the contradiction still remains? — There is no contradiction. The one verse speaks of him before he degenerated, the other after he degenerated.