Author Archives: Alan Brill

This is a first draft. Not completely thought through so it may change in a few days. I am not wedded to any section, so I may retract whole sections. Yet, I think there is something here.

When I first started this blog, the New York Times Sunday book review had an issue dedicated to the 1930’s depression featuring books about the attitudes toward the downtrodden masses . Many of the opinions featured corresponded to the positions of the Conservative rabbis of the era and their decision for the law to respond the masses. (My thoughts on the 1930’s will show up in a more professional venue, eventually). This week’s New York Times book review has two articles about the Tea Partiers. As I read those articles, it sounded much like the rhetoric on the orthodox blogs and orthodox editorials which blame the Rabbinic administration for the high cost of yeshiva tuition. It seems like we are heading for some form of Tea Partying about rabbinic authority.

It seems that the economic difficulties are generating a sense of outage that is taken out on the current leadership, in our case day school administrators. The important line in the book review is that “the objects of their outcries …are of far less consequence than the great failures that plague the nation.” There are problems and the objects of anger are not the cause. So the question is: When will there be a Rabbinic leader who is playing a tea-partier role? Since we have had rabbis in the 1950’s hunting communists, in the 1960’s wearing Dashikis, in the 70’s advocating “do your own thing” in the 1980’s cozying up to the Moral Majority, becoming libertarians in the 1990’s, and rabbis sounding like Evangelicals today, then it is only a matter of time until we start hearing Tea Partier sermons about Rabbinic leadership.

People are angry that they cannot afford to live the frum lifestyle they want, because if one is frum then one is guaranteed the lifestyle. Someone has to be at fault. If you create a community that requires the members to be in the top 6% of US income, and makes one comfortable only if one is in the top 3% then you have a social problem. The objects of blame are a side show, but if the blogs are an indication then there is some of the blame is being placed on leadership.

From the NYT

Anatomy of an Uprising By ALAN BRINKLEY October 8, 2010
Listening to the many and diverse demands and ideas that the Tea Partiers express in their rallies, pamphlets and oratory does relatively little to explain why so many Americans are so angry… Similar outbreaks of outrage and blame have accompanied most major economic crises over the last century and more…. The Great Depression produced multiple movements that reviled the power of bankers and the concentration of wealth. In both cases, as in our own time, the movements soon became immersed in innumerable other grievances and prejudices.
The Tea Partiers are right to be angry. But the objects of their outcries …are of far less consequence than the great failures that plague the nation.

But let me recount another Sukkot story. We had as a guest an NCSY BT from the 1970’s who is RW MO, as are his kids. He now lives in an agudah neighborhood somewhere in the US where 4 bedroom houses cost 180, 000. He was complaining that the synagogues here in Teaneck don’t allow drinking. He was adamant in his declaration that: who do the rabbis think they are telling us what to do! Rabbis have no right to forbid anything! He proclaimed that the tradition to drink on Simchat Torah goes back to the Gemara since the gemara says we do birchat Kohanim at Shararit because the kohanim will be drunk by mussaf. (I did not correct him about the Gemara or tell him what the Mishnah Berurah actually says, it was too good of a diatribe). Over the course of the meal, he complained about NY orthodox, its day schools, and the cost of living in the NY community. There was a sense of the Torah being one thing and the Rabbis as administrators as another. There was also a sense of how alienated some parts of out of town Orthodoxy are from the NYC enclaves.

There is a certain distrust of the elites in America and so too in certain parts of Orthodoxy. Many people feel outside or looking up at the elites who are disconnected from their lives. And many want freedom – a core value in America. Our enclaves are conformist and dont hear their needs.

The Beat Generation and the Tea Party Lee Siegal
Still, American dissent turns on a tradition of troublemaking, suspicion of elites and feelings of powerlessness, no matter where on the political spectrum dissent takes place.
Like the Beats, the Tea Partiers are driven by that maddeningly contradictory principle, subject to countless interpretations, at the heart of all American protest movements: individual freedom. The shared DNA of American dissent might be one answer to the question of why the Tea Partiers, so extreme and even anachronistic in their opposition to any type of government, exert such an astounding appeal.
More seriously, the origin of the word “beat” has a connection to the Tea Partiers’ sense that they are being marginalized as the country is taken away from them. According to Ginsberg, to be “beat” most basically signified “exhausted, at the bottom of the world, looking up or out . . . rejected by society.”

There are people out there who fell that they are not represented in the Rabbinic elite, just like Tea Partier’s have “a feeling that their opinions are not represented in Washington.” This movement or moment is likely to come from the right wing side – a call to follow Torah and not Rabbinical organizations, Rabbinical administrations, and the politics generated by rabbis. (It will probably still deeply respect Gedolim, Zaddikim, and Rabbinic authority in general-just not the political manifestations of lower levels of the hierarchy.)

In the past when there was an economic gap and a blaming of the Rabbinic leadership it led to varied results. In the 1740’s, there was a critique of Rabbinic leadership and the newly wealthy and new lands of Podolyia created Hasidism. People broke from the Kehillah to form shiblach. In the 1880’s, it lead to a variety of secular solutions that fled the Rabbinate to Zionism, Socialism, Bund, Folks Party. The story of Kotso shel Yod by Yehudah Leib Gordon conveys a sense of the alienation. By 1921, it lead to young Rabbis choosing the Mizrahi movement that preached job training, education for productivity, and secular studies. The Great Depression created a generation of Conservative rabbis who spoke of social realism and helping the masses.

Now, what will come from the economic crisis of the last few years. There will certainly be the creation of Orthodox communities that allow one to make lower than the top 6% of income. Centrism may be cast as having been a rich man’s religion. But the interesting point is that the blaming of the Rabbis as an object of scorn for the economic difficulties will lead to a distancing from the seemingly aloof rabbis. (It does not matter if it is true at all, just that it is perceived that way).

Now from where will the change occur? There are three choices: (1)the places with 180K homes far from NY who are alienated from the economics and education required for Centrism. (2) the new places in the Sun belt devoid of seminaries, rabbinic elite, and direct contact with the North (3) the heart of places such as Bergenfield where the economic inequities are being felt. This corresponds to (1)Those who fundamentally disenfranchised from the community (2)Those in a new place without a strong leadership base (3) those in the center who feel the greatest dissidence and that their expectations not met. Hasidism started in a place like the second choice, Secularism, Bund, and Mizrahism in the third, but those leader found fertile ground for their ideas in the first group.

Let me know when you start hearing from some young Rabbi who thinks we need to scale back Rabbinic authority or that the Rabbinical supervised enclave is not needed. Not a liberal Orthodox Rabbi who never had a strong sense of authority, rather someone who has a tea-party rhetoric against the elites who are not concerned for the needs of the people. Look to the right not the left. Someone with Tea Party politics and a strong sense of Torah.

I am not interested in discussing American politics, rather to gather the voices of the new Jewish generation.

There is a major under-reported story that will effect Jewish religion in America.
Hebrew College in Boston just announced that their 32 million dollar debt has been renegotiated. (see Update below) see here and here. This is where they were 10 months ago..

Rabbi Daniel L. Lehmann, the college president who is a YU musmach, took over in 2008 to a 32 million debt left by the previous administration. The institution did not meet the interest payments the year Lehman took over and paid operating costs on credit. They will enter 2011 with a clean slate. he was able to do this in the midst of a recession. This will give Lehmann and the Rabbinical school headed by Arthur Green an ability to emerge as the premier non-orthodox non-denominational rabbinical school. (This makes Lehmann into one of the top fundraisers out there right now – worthy of the comparison to Norman Lamm who renegotiated YU’s debt and then raised funds to make YU one of the wealthier institutions.- see update that negates this line.) Currently JTS remains with a much smaller debt, but one that it cannot get out from under.
If Lehmann can keep this up, he can design from almost scratch any type of new Jewish institution he wants. One not tied to any denomination or burdensome institutional tradition. Knowing his track record, he will succeed. He built the new Jewish HS in Boston from scratch.
The Rabbinical school under Green will definitely draw students from HUC JTS, and RRC. We will see if he makes a pitch to attract liberal YU students like himself. His interests include music- he is likely to develop the existing music program. Expect his 2011 graduation-end of year speech to give a vision of where he is taking the institution and American Jewry.

Update- It seems that Hebrew College had to give up the building to pay off the debt. 32 million was not raised, rather they gave to the banks the ill conceived building that Gordis built. There is still no clear indication if the building was repossessed or if there is a lease to stay at that location. (I should know not to trust Rabbinical school announcements about their finances, oh well. ) If they vacate, where will they go? I stil have fond memories of their former location in a run-down mansion in Brookline. So, it shows strong leadership and does not show massive fund raising. Either way- they are now free to build Jewish programs when other seminaries are strapped for cash.

This speech tic of speaking of the new generation is not going away so fast.
There is a new Avi Chai Report:
Generation of Change: How Leaders in Their Twenties and Thirties Are Reshaping American Jewish Life

Much of the results is old hat already and the write up has too much of Jack Wertheimer’s preaching rather than Steve Cohen’s sociology.
The report introduces three types of activities: protective, progressive, and expressive. They are also working with a clear divide between establishment and non-establishment. Since I filled out the survey form, from their write-up it seems that my answers were included in the statistics for the older establishment group. 🙂

Organized Jewish life in the second half of the twentieth century was focused around protective activities…
It is simply not true, as some contend, that younger Jewish leaders want nothing to do with these organizations and their protective causes. Many do, especially among those who are socioeconomically more secure and relate positively to the networking culture of the established Jewish organizations; political and religious propensities also dispose some younger leaders to identify with protective causes.

Two other agendas are simultaneously at work among young leaders. “Progressive” causes appeal to some: Jewish leaders involved with start-ups are especially apt to identify with broader social causes—environmentalism, service to the downtrodden (mainly non-Jews), and a variety of social justice causes, including what they regard as justice for the Palestinians.

The third agenda might be labeled expressive: Young Jewish leaders want to help their peers find personal meaning in being Jewish. There has been an explosion of interest in Jewish culture—including everything from foods of various Jewish communities to an interest in Jewish languages and folkways to a celebration of Jewish books, music, film, and other artistic productions. A small but noteworthy minority is drawn to experimental forms of Jewish religious expression, usually found outside of conventional synagogues. And more broadly, younger Jewish leaders have created a wide range of opportunities for their peers (and others) to study Torah, explore spiritual questions, and probe what being Jewish means to them.

The emphasis leaders place on protective, progressive, and expressive types of Jewish activities sets groups apart from one another. Put differently, the mix of these three elements shapes the particular culture of organizations for young Jewish adults, whether they are sponsored by establishment organizations or non-establishment ones.

Nonestablishment Programs: Over the past ten to 15 years, a large network of new programs and institutions has been
created by Jews in their 20’s and 30’s. These so-called start-ups tend to be characterized by the following:
1. They do not hesitate to question the status quo.
2. They seem highly attuned to their clients—younger Jews.
3. They experiment.
4. They network with one another and arrive at
innovative solutions.
5. They have the agility to associate seemingly unrelated
fields and causes.

From Christian Century (this is a very non-Catholic list)
Essential theology books of the past 25 years

We posed this question to eight theologians: Suppose someone who hasn’t been keeping up with theology for the past 25 years now wants to read the most important books written during that time. What five titles would you suggest?

Here are their responses:—Click on the name and you will get their 5 recommendations with explanation

Stanley Hauerwas

Amos Yong

Emilie M. Townes

Lawrence S. Cunningham

Sarah Coakley

Kevin J. Vanhoozer

George Hunsinger

Willie James Jennings

Here is an excerpt from a an Pentecostal philosopher who does philosophy from within his commitment to speaking in tongues. What would happen if a Breslover were to write philosophy of science based on his faith commitment to outpouring of the heart? Or an NCSY’er would grow up to write a theology based on circle time, ebbings, and ruah? Or what about a philosophy of science written by a practitioner of Abulafia techniques? I am trying to understand, and to evaluate. What would be good about this? I do think there are many good aspects. And what would be problematic verging on the ridiculous? If the starting point of a lamdan was halakhah, then what would be the starting point of a modern Hasid, or a kiruv professional? Can it create something rigorous or only silly? Read the short interview and then try the thought experiment of doing the same thing to a reader of Izbitz acting in accord with God’s will.

Q&A with Jamie Smith on Pentecostalism
September 17, 2010

Calvin professor of philosophy James K.A. Smith has recently written two books focused on the subject of Pentecostalism: Thinking in Tongues: Pentecostal Contributions to Christian Theology and Science and the Spirit: A Pentecostal Engagement with the Sciences.

What would you say is the pentecostal contribution to Christian philosophy?

Well, so far, not much! But I hope this is a beginning. The whole project was actually inspired by Alvin Plantinga’s important article, “Advice to Christian Philosophers,” which I read while I was in college. In that article—which was his inaugural address at Notre Dame—Plantinga argued that Christian philosophers should have the courage to begin philosophizing from their specific convictions as Christians. I have simply extended Al’s argument and made it more specific: What would it look like for Pentecostal and charismatic philosophers to begin with some of the basic convictions of their unique worldview? Thinking in Tongues tries to answer that question.

I argue that there are unique elements of a pentecostal worldview: an openness to God’s “surprise;” a kind of “enchanted” theology of creation which sees the Spirit continually active in the world; an affirmation of embodiment as seen in the emphasis on physical healing as well as the “physical” shape of charismatic worship; a special place for story, narrative, and testimony in how we know; and a unique emphasis on eschatology and mission. So following Plantinga’s lead, I argue that these elements of a pentecostal worldview would affect philosophical thinking about knowledge (epistemology) and the nature of reality (ontology). So the goal is to explore how a pentecostal starting point makes a difference for philosophical thinking. That’s why, rather playfully, I talk about “thinking in tongues!”

You’ve also just co-edited a related book: Science and the Spirit: A Pentecostal Engagement with the Sciences. Can you briefly describe this book?

For some people, a book on Pentecostalism and science might sound like an oxymoron! But that’s precisely why we launched this project. Both science and Pentecostalism are “globalizing” forces, and while one might expect there to be an inherent tension between the two, we try to show otherwise.
Science and the Spirit grew out of a grant we received from the Templeton Foundation—so the book is the fruit of a multi-year research initiative that brought together a team of scientists, theologians, and philosophers from Pentecostal and charismatic traditions to consider some of the big questions at the intersection of Pentecostalism and science. On the one hand, we wanted to show how and why Pentecostals should engage and pursue science; on the other hand, we also wanted to show that sometimes scientists try to smuggle in assumptions about science that would seem to preclude certain Pentecostal beliefs, such as belief in divine healing or the realities of demons. So the book’s not just about getting Pentecostals to submit to the unquestioned authority of science. We’re also encouraging Pentecostals to think critically about some of the assumptions in the sciences. It’s a two-way street.

source here
His blog

Phillippa Foot died yesterday. Once upon a time, Rabbi Walter Wurzburger force fed me platters of Phillippa Foot’s philosophic writings on ethics. For Wurzbuger, the writings of Foot were basic for formulating a contemporary philosophy of halakhah. Unlike the Kantians and Utilitarians, Foot stressed the lived elements of human life and purposeful aspects of ethics. Similar to Prof. Isadore Twersky’s presentation of the law in Maimonides, halakhah has a telos. Foot also taught the non-reducibility of ethic to a single factor. Like halakhah, there are always multiple variables to be considered. Foot rejected subjectivism, helping Wurzburger formulate an Orthodox rejection of Buber. Finally, Foot turned to the importance of Virtue Ethics and Wurzburger followed suit. Even though no one in the US cares about a philosophy of halakhah anymore, it is still nice to remember the attempts. Now I must get back to Hilary Putnam.

Obituary from The Guardian – full text here

The moral philosopher Philippa Foot, who has died aged 90, started a new trend in ethics. She challenged, in two seminal papers given in the late 1950s, the prevailing Oxbridge orthodoxy of AJ Ayer and Richard Hare; and, for the next few decades, passionate debate over her naturalism, as against Hare’s prescriptivism, occupied most moral philosophers in Britain and America. She was also one of the pioneers of virtue ethics, a key development in philosophy from the 1970s onwards.
From her essay Moral Beliefs (1958) to the collection Moral Dilemmas (2002), and throughout her academic life at Oxford and universities in North America, she was always passionate that “the grounding of a moral argument is ultimately in facts about human life” and in what it is rational for humans to want.
Yet her comparison, in a well-known paper (Morality As a System of Hypothetical Imperatives, 1972) between Immanuel Kant’s view of moral law as “inescapable” in some special way, and the demands of etiquette, was intended to argue that people who follow either morality or etiquette without questioning them “are relying on an illusion, as if trying to give the moral ‘ought’ a magic force”. Later, she rejected this position, and was irritated to be still credited with it. Moral constraints, she came to believe, were indispensably a rational part of flourishing as a human being – in this, they did not resemble etiquette.
Foot pooh-poohed what she called the “rigoristic, prissy, moralistic tone” so frequent in moral philosophy, and the way it had lost touch with real life. “I do not know what could be meant by saying that it was someone’s duty to do something,” she said, “unless there was an attempt to show why it mattered if this sort of thing was not done.”
But she opposed such theories not just because they were too wide, but because they were too narrow. In the 1950s she had begun, along with Anscombe, to shift the focus away from what makes an isolated action good or bad, to the Aristotelian concentration on what makes a person good or bad in the long-term. Morality, she argued, is about how to live – not so much a series of logically consistent, well-calculated decisions as a lifetime endeavour to become the sort of person who habitually and happily does virtuous things. And “virtuous”, for Foot, meant well-rounded and human. She condemned as moral faults “the kind of timidity, conventionality and wilful self-abnegation that may spoil no one’s life but one’s own”, advocating “hope and a readiness to accept good things”.
Foot continued, and modified, her onslaught on subjectivism in ethics throughout her life. She also attacked utilitarian theories, which see goodness as a matter of actions’ consequences, and tend to equate the badness of failing to prevent an evil outcome with perpetrating it.

This is taken from a longer article addressed to college faculty about how to adjust to the new generation of students. It is from a list serve for faculty development. In response, my colleagues are busy creating online dimensions to courses and FB pages to their courses. They are redesigning for this generation. My question is what if we think about the same issues for teaching Torah? What sort of synagogue would you design that fits this student? What sort of rabbi? (I am assuming that modern Orthodoxy followed the lost generation and Centrism followed the gen x.- not the topic for this post.) What synagogue will keep them busy and plugged in but acknowledge that they have no interest in books, introspection, or rebellion? They are not deep minds or deep psychologically. They dont like authority but like emotional parental units and respect expert knowledge. What does the rabbi need to teach? What do you offer those who are action centered? (shechitah lessons?) Would rabbis need to have a techie knowledge of some aspect of Judaism? They all expect to not have their self-esteem broken, so I guess no stories of older Lithuanian rabbis calling people horses when a wrong answer is given. They respect rules. So do we give them a Judaism of rules and leave them free the rest of the time OR do we engage their materialism? Their boomer parents thought they valued introspection, intellect and rebellion but instead settled into materialism and emotionalism. What halakhah would you offer this group? Which Jewish thinkers would you teach?

This generation comprises children born between 1982 (some say 1980) and 1995 to the late baby boomers. These parents kept their children’s lives busily structured with sports, music lessons, club meetings, youth group activities, and part-time jobs. In their spare time, young millennials spent many hours on the computer, often the Internet, interacting with peers, doing school work, playing games, shopping, and otherwise entertaining themselves…They received a weaker K-12 education than previous generations.

Of course, blanket statements about an entire generation always apply to only a portion of its members.

Nathan Wolski, who gained his PhD in Aboriginal Archaeology from the University of Melbourne in 2000, sets out to give an introduction to the Zohar as a great work of literature. He translated Melila Hellner-Eshed’s wonderful work on the Zohar into English and he wants to capture some of that literary drama of the mystical adventure for the novice reader of the Zohar. This book is, as the title tells us, to help us Journey into the Zohar.

From his own blurb.

The crowning work of medieval Kabbalah, the Zohar is unlike any other work in the Jewish canon. Written in Aramaic, the Zohar contains complex mystical exegesis as well as a delightful epic narrative about the Companions—a group of sages who wander through second-century Israel discussing the Torah while encountering children, donkey drivers, and other surprising figures who reveal profound mysteries to them. Nathan Wolski offers original translations of episodes involving this mystical fellowship and goes on to provide a sustained reading of each. With particular emphasis on the literary and performative dimensions of the composition, Wolski takes the reader on a journey through the central themes and motifs of the zoharic world: kabbalistic hermeneutics, the structure of divinity, the nature of the soul, and, above all, the experiential core of the Zohar—the desire to be saturated and intoxicated with the flowing fluids of divinity. A Journey into the Zohar opens the mysterious, wondrous, and at times bewildering universe of one of the masterpieces of world mystical literature to a wider community of scholars, students, and general readers alike.

His method is to translate a long passage of the Zohar at the start of each of the ten chapters and then free associate similar passages in the Zohar, in midrash, and in mystical literature. These additional passages of the Zohar are not really explained, at least not enough for a reader like me to understand.

In a chapter on “the world of separation” he introduces the role of Neo-Platonism and Plotinus. In a chapter on secrets, he introduces Gnosticism. In other chapters, he freely contextualizes Zohar in Spanish love poetry, and Maimonidean thought, a passage on midnight in the Zohar leads to a discussion of the Islamic mystical poetry of Ibn Arabi and Rumi, a Chain of Being passage leads to a discussion of in ibn Gabirol, and he accepts Fritz Baer’s presentation of the dangers of Averroism.

Wolski talks of the great poetics of the Zohar but does not actually show any. As an English teacher that I knew used to say “show me don’t tell me.” He claims the book has great literary technique but he only shows a little drama such as the bold and delayed entrance of the protagonist of a passage. He claims that the book requires great detective work to catch all the explicit and not so explicit allusions but he does not show any rather he settles for giving a broad cultural context. He does not try to explicate and pin down any proximal sources or allusions. Does the book have greater literary merit than Alfonso X of Castile’s magical tales or the tales in Yehudah Al-Harizi’s Takhkemoni? We cannot know from this volume.

At points he is not sure if he is writing an introduction to a medieval work or offering a 21st century presentation.For examples, he writes that even if we don’t relate to Plotinus or Zohar metaphysics, nevertheless the ideas still resonate with the new age. Or even if don’t relate to Maimonides or Zohar on providence, here is a piece of Yeshaya Leibowitz to ponder. It seems like the book is an outgrowth of an adult education course, or a non-critical undergraduate course on translations of Zohar passages.

The translations in the volume are predominately from Book III of the Zohar, the section Matt wont get to for a while. The grapevine tells me that Wolski will be translating Midrash Ha-Neelam of the Pritzker Zohar, maybe he will also have his hand in volume III.

The book reminds me of the 1940’s books on Maimonides that discussed Plato, Aristotle, Saadyah, Ralbag, and Spinoza and then they discussed the role of rationality in Judaism. The goal was not to pin down what Maimonides’ position was by comparison to Farabi and ibn Sina, rather to explain the reader the Maimonidean project of rationality. Those of you with less background than I, please let me know if you find this book clear or useful for an introductory course.

In the meantime- here is a complete copy of the book in pdf to download, he has a fan who uploaded it in Croatia.

Here is a bit more post-holiday moralizing. Kwame Anthony Appiah, the famous ethicist and philosophy professor at Princeton University asked the question in the Wapo:What will future generations condemn us for? What else should be on the list? Does anyone in the observant community care? Why not? What were we thinking?

Industrial meat production

Kwame Anthony Appiah, a philosophy professor at Princeton University, is the author of “The Honor Code: How Moral Revolutions Happen.”

Tom Segev who usually write sharp book reviews almost “phoned this one in” to fulfill his obligation to an editor without stopping to consider the content.Nevertheless, it is nice to see the Chida reviewed in a paper. One does not get a sense that Segev understood the role of an 18th century “Emissary of the land of Israel” as cultural conduit.

The Makings of History / Renaissance rabbi

Azulai also wrote a text called “Ma’agal Tov,” a kind of travelogue that depicts the ways of life of the several Jewish communities he visited.

Oded Cohen, a doctoral student in Tel Aviv University’s history department who devoted his master’s thesis to “Ma’agal Tov,” described the book as a kind of autobiography. In it, he shows that Azulai curiously investigated art, landscapes, architecture, history and politics. Many of his acquaintances were Muslims and Christians. This social network led him to King Louis XVI.

An article by Cohen about Azulai appears in the new edition of the Ben-Zvi Institute’s bimonthly Hebrew historical journal, “Et-Mol.”

As sometimes happens, the article’s title, “The Jerusalem Rabbi and the French King Meet at Versailles,” promises a bit too much. That meeting took place on January 6, 1778. Azulai was staying at the time in Paris, where he befriended a person he described as a “wise goy from academia,” named Fabri, who was a courtier at Versailles; he took Azulai with him on one of his visits. Before they saw the king, they toured the palace.

“We came to a handsome, adorned room lined with several pillars that were coated with gold on both sides,” Azulai wrote. Finally they reached the hall where Louis XVI was seated – he was surrounded in the gallery by ministers and all sorts of counselor-aristocrats.

“He was dressed in simple red,” wrote Azulai, adding “my blessings to the king.”

Azulai indicated that the king noticed him, and sent one of his men from the court to clarify with Fabri “where I came from as an ambassador.” Azulai’s acquaintance replied that he was not an ambassador, but rather a guest from Egypt, who came out of curiosity. “Then we walked out, and all those who were standing showed respect, and some of the ladies who passed by bowed, as is their custom.”

At the bottom of the Haaretz page is a little review of a book about the area of J-M that we now call Palmach and was originally called Merhavia- and the burning question of why is there a Chopin Street?

The past few years there has been a growing tension among those who work in interactive professions about their need to check their blackberries on Yom Tov. Some fields need daily input. There was quite a strain in the community this year with the three day Yom Tovs. We will have this same 3-day yom tov pattern in 2012, 2013, 2014, and 2017.

Over at Jewschool, the following was posted:

Love it or hate it, this pattern is here to stay. We’ll do it all over next year, and then again in 2013, 2014, and 2017: half of the years in the 2010s.

The other half of the decade will see a different pattern that we haven’t seen in quite a while: Rosh Hashanah on Monday, with all the fall holidays falling on weekdays. This pattern also includes Shavuot starting on Saturday night, leading to another “3-day yom tov” for the 2-day crowd.

All told, the half-decade from 5771 to 5775 will include a total of 14 “3-day yom tovs”, and the decade from 5771 to 5780 will include 21. (But don’t worry, there’s only 18 more to go!)

This leads to my prediction (awaited since the title of the post): This decade, and especially this half-decade, will see lots of 2-day-yom tov people switching over to 1 day.

In a few years, we can come back and check this prediction and see whether the 1-day majority has gotten any larger.

So, I have a historical question. When modernizing Jews gave up the second day of yom tov in the 19th century was the push from certain professions or certain districts?

Jacob Katz, following his method of relying on Mannheim’s concept of ideology, presents the issue as an ideological battle between Reform and Orthodoxy (See, “Orthodox defense of Second Day of Yom Tov in Divine Law in Human Hands). But has anyone checked- did the push to get rid of yom tov sheni occur after a series of 3 day yom tovs pushed people to feel a need for the change? Was it more in certain professions? Maybe it was not ideological but a social push from ordinary businessmen? Was there a need to do manual labor or more likely to check the European stock market? Someone want to check the 19th century dates and determine if there was a decade like the next decade with many 3 day yom tov’s in a row? Does it coordinate with the push for the change?

In the Washington Post, Damon Linker (author of “Theocons”), proposes a “religious test” for all political candidates:Instead of attempting the impossible task of abolishing faith from the political conversation, we need a new kind of religious test for our leaders. “Religious convictions do not always harmonize with the practice of democratic government, and allowing voters to explore the dissonance is legitimate.”

This “test’s” questions would include the following:
How might the doctrines and practices of your religion conflict with the fulfillment of your official duties?
How would you respond if your church issued an edict that clashed with the duties of your office?

Linker identifies, as an example of such an “edict”, the teaching of many Catholic bishops that Catholic leaders should work to outlaw abortion, “even though the Supreme Court has declared it a constitutionally protected right, and even if the candidate’s constituents are overwhelmingly pro-choice.”

Fifty years ago last week, Senator John F. Kennedy’s addressed the Greater Houston Ministerial Association to explain why he can be Catholic and still be president. How can he be trusted not to follow the Pope as a Catholic? If Bishops claim to decide an issue-how can he serve the best interests of the country?  Kennedy followed the thought of John Courtney Murray that eventually led to Gaudium et Spes, a broader vision of the Catholic Church in the world.

Here we are fifty years later and we have no equivalent halakhic version. If Poskim or Roshei yeshiva claim extra terrestrial & extra officio authority to  decide issues then: can there be a Halakhic politician? If every matter claimed to be effecting society is “pikuah nefesh” requiring a pesak, then can an Orthodox politician override it? Kennedy offered to step down if there was a conflict of conscious and public good. Could an orthodox Jew rise in politics without having to switch to “traditional” or “observant”?

Here is a post from Mirror of Justice blog emphasizing another aspect. Is there a traditional/halakhic/orthodox mandate to solve questions of global economics and politics? Chief Rabbi Sacks creates such a mandate but would it stand up as fodder for speeches for an observant candidate? In the 1980’s we were still justifying an ethic in/out of halakhah, but what of the international issues that were already there 50 years ago. What was the Orthodox Congressman Herbert Tenzer thinking in the 1960’s. (Does anyone know if  he ever gave such a speech- his archives and oral history interviews are in YU but undetailed). Can a Jewish politician speak of  “social welfare and human rights, of disarmament and international order and peace” and be more specific than “tikkun olam” or the “dignity of Adam I”.

While recognizing that the religious issue was an important matter before the voters (Can a Catholic be a loyal American office holder? Well, the fact that he had been a holder of elective office for some time would suggest an affirmative answer to this question.)… Still, as a politician seeking office, he made a gamble which was this: telling not only the Protestant ministers gathered at the site where he was delivering his address but also the American people that he believed “in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute.” I suspect that this statement was intended to placate those who believed without question that no one who claimed to be Catholic could also be a loyal citizen and, therefore, a competent and effective President.

So, perhaps with Saint Thomas More in mind, he concluded this address by pointing out that “if the time should ever come—and I do not concede any conflict to be even remotely possible—when my office would require me to either violate my conscience or violate the national interest, then I would resign the office; and I hope any conscientious public servant would do the same. But I do not intend to apologize for these views to my critics of either Catholic or Protestant faith—nor do I intend to disavow either my views or my church in order to win this election.”

Now we must fast forward a bit to a little over four months later….as the President of the United States duly elected by his fellow citizens… Many recall his famous words: “Ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country.” But other words spoken by the new President demand our attention today.

Before his audience—wherever they were—heard this famous exhortation about service, President Kennedy declared in the first substantive paragraph of the address these words of significance: “The world is very different now. For man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty and all forms of human life. And yet the same revolutionary beliefs for which our forbears fought are still at issue around the globe-the belief that the rights of man come not from the generosity of the state but from the hand of God.”

I received some company on Sukkot afternoon, one of whom was an unexpected guest whom I don’t speak to often. He wanted to talk about post-orthodoxy – chatter, brouhaha , dialogue, and editorializing about it. He wanted me to publish it as 1000 words somewhere, there was talk of where to pitch it, and eventually more guests came over. In the course of the discussion some of the following came out.
(For those new to the blog and need a definition of post-orthodoxy, see here and here and here.)

The guest was in his early 30’s and part of the of non-Manhattan halakhic egalitarian minyan. He wanted to conceive of the change to post-orthodoxy as ideological and creating new institutions. I was more cautious and reiterated that I saw the change as a moment in time in which some people raised Modern Orthodox have moved on. Some have given up religion and want to be left alone from all of it, some are sowing wild oats, some have become renewal or liberal, others egalitarian halakhic, some are just feeling boxed in, and yet others returning more to a 1950’s Orthodoxy. Much of this is non-ideological, having more to do with carving out a space different than their parents. Much of it is due to new careers, attending Ivy’s, attending state colleges, new places of residence, staying single longer, texting or bicycling on Shabbat, and discovering the wider world.

My holiday guest was not satisfied with this. “But then these people are just sowing wild oats and eventually will return to Orthodox institutions” and they will just become “my parents modern Orthodoxy again.” He keep coming back to the point that for him it was an ideological struggle against the repressive world of the late 1990’s Orthodoxy. He emphasized how the leadership of these new minyanim is yeshiva trained and for him that was not a coincidence. Eventually we came around to the point that I use the tern post-orthodox for the gen y-millennials and not for Baby Boomer liberalism.

My guest, however, as the very last of the gen x’ers is living a cusp life. He has the religious habits of the millenials but an animus against what he perceives as the closed-mindedness of the modern Orthodox Gen X’ers. As a cusp person, he sees both groups but has an active ideological stance against his immediate path of gen x’ers which was not chosen. He needed to have clear lines of demarcation from and against the perceived turn to the right. The defining line is that they dont need a posek or to enter into Rabbinic authority. They can consult with Rabbis and make their own educated decisions as educated lay people.

We then discussed various signs of change, for example weddings in the 1990’s did not have mixed dancing for the second set, now it is becoming common. (Personally, I have attended weddings of several kids in the same family in which older siblings had a mechitza on the dance floor and then attended their younger siblings weddings in which there was mixed dancing). Another guest pointed out that the kids are now picking a place for their year in Israel knowing that they wont change their lifestyle. We discussed how many parents here in the neighborhood have made peace with the fact that their day school educated kids are currently not Shomer Shabbat. And that we have no clear demographics but if we look at HS class lists we can get a sense of the numbers.

We then mentioned how a local baby boomer synagogue that had 1000 people for Rosh Hashanah had no baby carriages, strollers, or attendance at the groups. Was it just age stratification between synagogues or a sign of something more?

This lead to a discussion of: where to get hard data? There will be no 2010 National Jewish Population Survey. If one is done in 2020, then will likely show the multitude of Orthodox kids of the Gen X’ers and the decline from the demographics of the Gen Y kids wont be shown until 2030. (Think of it in the same way as the decline of the Northeast Conservative congregations was only shown in 2000, even though one sensed it already in 1980.)

We then drifted into a discussion of new institutions. But it came out that the RIETS class of 2006, as counted by one of its members, had a full one third of its graduates as liberal as YCT. (I cannot vouch for that.) It had some graduates who were basically Haredi and a majority that were right wing, but 50 out of 150 were liberal. (I am not sure what the criteria was.) We then mentioned how many young rabbis are preaching evangelical, new age, and pop culture.

Other guests came and went over Yom Tov. Rumor has it that YU is going to be aggressively recruiting students from JSU, the public HS branch of NCSY. They will attend the mechinah, the successor to JSS. If so, then they will create unintended consequences. These kids will have had public school lives of football, drill team, music camp, working as waiters in non-kosher restaurants, flipping burgers in McDonalds, having non-Jewish best friends growing up and having a real HS curriculum. When JSS existed in the 1960’s and 1970’s as a place for Hebrew school graduates, the attitudes of the students were generally to the left of the Yeshiva Program student. There are surveys in the student paper, regularly done, showing attitudes inverse of the rest of campus. They used their talents to provide much of the extra-curricular activities and many eventually became the side-burned cologne wearing rabbis of the 1970’s who sported plaid jackets. (Yes, they also produced many on the right wing side, but in the majority they did not. So I don’t need wingnuts showing up to argue against the old surveys.) This will be an unintended social change back to what used to be. (Many of these graduates showed great commitment to Orthodoxy when they found out they could not become actors, musicians, or chefs, but the very desire to enter these profession reflects a different community).

Finally, Katy Perry was on TV this weekend. I only knew who her name from the discussions on the religion beat. Here she is, someone raised by Evangelical parents who did not let her have non-religious pop-music or dress in an immodest manner. She was a Christian singer in her late teens providing the enthusiasm for other teens to be religious. Now, she is entirely beyond or post her evangelical upbringing. But let us look at a few points. More or better enthusiasm at Jesus camp would have not keep her right wing. In fact, she was the enthusiasm and ruah. Better advisers would have not kept her religious. As part of a generation rejecting the religion of the 1990’s, she is not arguing for greater roles for women, she is into seductive presentation and immodest performance. She remains against blasphemy or speaking against religion. And she is not into liberal theology that speaks of the need for changes due to modernity, she continues to directly read the Bible but now finds that Paul speaks new age universalism.

If we only had some demographics about the Jewish community.