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With all the recent eulogies of militant atheist Christopher Hitchens by many religious people, it is a good time to ask the question of the value of atheism for the religious soul? Many religious people were more impressed and placed themselves in dialogue with Hitchens than with sanctimonious religious followers. Many fine religious works were written as a response and new defense of religion. Religious blogs and journals are devoting more space to his eulogy than to those of religious figures.
How do we explain this influence?
Rav Kook thought God needs atheism.”Because atheism cleanses the dross of ‘petty religion,’ the narrowness and provincialism of established Jewish religion that frequently becomes arrogant, rigid and judgmental. We need these people, these atheists, whom seek to befriend.”

Do we still have a theory that allows us to see a value in atheism? Rav Kook was happy to see late 19th century atheism wake up the simple Jewish masses because they had primitive views and they needed to evolve. You lose a few souls but the nation gains a purified idea of God. But what would Rav Kook have said about the primitive views of the 1990’s? Without the evolutionary sense of moving from peasant to modern world then what would he say about our current crop of vulgar believers who became vulgar atheists based on reading the new atheists? Rav Kook assumes that there would be an advancement in perception, in a Piaget or Kohlberg sense. He did not assume that they would remain un-evolved. What is being provided to these simple people who smashed their idols?
Are Jewish thinkers acknowledging that God as a supernatural force is dangerous for the community the way Rav Kook did?
Most of the best books written in response to the new atheism pointed out that the faith of Augustine, Calvin, Schleirermacher, or Kierkegaard was not the crude view of the atheists. Do we need a Jewish version? And for who? Those who already read books, can already read the best books. But the primitive believers who became primitive atheists still dont know how to read. I have no evolutionary belief that they will evolve.

And what about the darkness of atheism itself- what would be a current way to explain that it has a force for the good? Thoughts?

From the VBM

When the heretic smashes his “idols”, his preconceived notion of God, his activities are accompanied by danger. A concept of God has been shattered – and it must eventually be rebuilt. This brings the momentum of a religious community to a halt. Instead of continuing to climb ever higher on their pathway to spiritual uplifting, the religious community must now rethink its direction, as well as its confidence.

While the heretic is unable to destroy God, his arguments and critiques destroy the normative systems and patterns of belief. The heretic rejects the precepts and commandments of Torah and thereby brings into question any redeeming value that they appear to have. These commandments are the religious community’s guideposts for spiritual growth, and the heretic weakens them, if he does not destroy them completely.

Rav Kook, however, argues that a positive spark does emanate from the depths of the non-believer’s arguments. The non-believer challenges the religious man’s concept of the Divine, forcing the religious man to re-assess his perceptions. Not only does this strengthen the religious community by demanding a re-evaluation, it is also necessary for the community’s continued development. Since God is a priori undefinable, the religious community’s perceptions of the Divine, and their consequent behavior, must constantly be revised. Hence heresy, “kefira,” is the only dark force capable of contributing to world perfection

Confronting God can be an enjoyable and enriching experience for Man. However, if a person’s confrontation is based on a misconception of God, this can lead to crisis. This crisis may eventually result in a denial of God’s existence.
God is commonly described as a Supernatural Force. It is this common perception of God which R. Kook believes to be erroneous and thus dangerous.

For those who want to see some of the religious appreciations of Hitchens-see
Commonweal
American Thinker
Baptist Press
Christianity Today This Evangelical one in Christianity Today is exceptional good, but the Baptist News has a good closing:

I would like to see the dialogue of Christian apologetics move from Hitchens, Dawkins, and Harris into our houses, diners, and local community centers,” Stetzer wrote. “The AP news wire will not be abuzz with the passing of the atheist in your neighborhood, but your heart ought hurt for them. I am grateful for evangelical scholars who have engaged New Atheism with the level of intellectual commitment the movement deserves. But for most of us, we ought to concern ourselves with and grieve over the debates that war in the minds of our families, friends, and coworkers.

As reported in an earlier blog post from February 2011, a recent book came out by Peter Tudvad exposing Soren Kierkegaard’s antisemitism. Now, in the official Lutheran newspaper in Denmark, there is a defense that even tries to absolve Luther of the charge and in doing so relies on stereotypes of the Jews as well as comparing the crucifixion to Hitler. We have to thank the blog Piety on Kierkegaard for keeping us informed. The author of the blog writes here:

Just when you thought the debate surrounding Peter Tudvad’s book Stadier på antisemitismens vej: Søren Kierkegaard og Jøderne (stages on the way of anti-Semitism: Søren Kierkegaard and the Jews) (Rosinante, 2010), had probably died down, it’s actually flared up again. Ole Jørgensen published what has got to be the most bizarre defense of Kierkegaard yet. Jørgensen’s article, “Sjusk med ord. Søren Kierkegaard var ikke antisemit” (Linguistic carelessness. Kierkegaard was not an anti-Semite) appeared in Monday’s edition of Kristeligt Dagblad (Christian daily news). The title might lead one to suppose that Kristeligt Dagblad is a relatively obscure paper. It isn’t. Remember, Denmark has a state church. The Danish Lutheran Church is the official church of the Danish people. This undoubtedly explains why Jørgensen took it upon himself to defend not only Kierkegaard, but also Martin Luther against the charge of anti-Semitism. Luther, he asserts, merely “chastens the Jews in his book On the Jews and their Lies.” One might be tempted to conclude from that remark that Jørgensen hasn’t actually read Luther (or Tudvad either since Tudvad quotes extensively from Luther’s works where they bear on the Jews).

What is clear, however, is that Jørgensen has what one could charitably call a rather idiosyncratic understanding of what constitutes anti-Semitism. He observes, for example, that far from being an anti-Semite, “Kierkegaard even had a Jew in his employ for several years: Israel Levin, who […] was thus able to advance himself, in the manner Jews are so good at, both economically and socially.” That is, Jørgensen apparently does not see the generalization that Jews are particularly good at advancing themselves economically and socially as in any way anti-Semitic, which is bizarre given such a generalization buys into stereotypes concerning Jews and money, and that there is hardly a worse crime in the eyes of the Danes than social climbing.

Jørgensen observes that “[o]ne should use some other word than ‘anti-Semitism’” to apply to Kierkegaard. “[I]t was more Kierkegaard’s [religious] zeal,” he continues, “that led him to rein in [lægge mundbidslet på] these occasionally mischievous [frække] Jews.”

It wasn’t merely Kierkegaard, or even Luther, who felt it necessary, according to Jørgensen, to “rein in,” or “chasten” the Jews. Christ himself, observes Jørgensen, “pulls no punches” (lægges der virkelig ikke fingre imellem) when he “says to the Jews: ‘You are of your father the devil and your will is to do your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and has nothing to do with the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies he speaks according to his own nature, for he is a liar and a father of lies’” (John 8:44).

“See how closely,” asserts Jørgensen, “lies and murder are connected with each other–both with the Jews and with Hitler. The lies of the Jews crucified Christ. Hitler’s lies murdered six million Jews.” How could anyone trot out the stereotype of the Jews as “Christ killers” (a stereotype so offensive that even the pope was forced recently to officially repudiate it) in an article that purports to defend someone, anyone, against the charge of anti-Semitism?

Concludes Jørgensen, “That’s a careless us of language and an [attempt to] exploit Kierkegaard’s good name for personal gain.” That is, Kierkegaard was no more an anti-Semite than Luther was, or than Jørgense’s “careless use of language” make him appear to be.

Read the Rest Here 

David N. Myers, professor at UCLA together with Nomi M. Stolzenberg of the USC Law School are writing a book on Kiryas Joel. A precis or excerpt came out this week and it looks good. It is interesting how many readers did not understand the excerpt compelling them to retell it in simpler language to dispel assumptions of advocacy or critique. Their major point, and it is quite correct, is “that Kiryas Joel represents a decidedly American strain of communitarianism, marked by difference and segregation, we were describing an ironic and surprising feature of American legal and political history.” In the old country, hamlets or more proverbially shtetls were generally half non-Jewish and dependent on the provincial prince and the peasants. But here in the US, reflecting American freedom of religion and isolated compounds they have created the all-Jewish town. The irony is that their ability for isolation from non-Jews reflects American values and how America legally protects the Amish.

A number of readers’ comments suggest to us that a key point in our recent post, “Theocracy in America?” may have been misunderstood. When we wrote that Kiryas Joel represents a decidedly American strain of communitarianism, marked by difference and segregation, we were describing an ironic and surprising feature of American legal and political history. We were not prescribing or condoning the kind of blurring of religious and political lines of authority that we notice in Kiryas Joel. Nor were we making the opposite normative claim, namely, that the establishment of the Village is necessarily in violation of the fundamental principles of liberty and equality that guide American law.

Our aim is not to take sides in the bitter dispute between the establishment faction and the dissidents in Kiryas Joel. Rather, it is to see the community as part of a broader legal-political phenomenon, of a piece with the same system that has permitted significant levels of racial and economic segregation to take rise in American society. This is what makes Kiryas Joel such an interesting case: it shines a spotlight on features of America, and the constitutional values “for which America stands,” that many Americans consciously disavow. That there is an establishment faction in the Village associated with Rabbi Aron Teitelbaum that exercises heavy-handed control over political, legal and religious affairs is not in dispute. That there are a variety of dissident groups who seek to challenge that control and gain a measure of autonomy over their own religious affairs is not in dispute either. What is less clear, counter-intuitive as it may be, is that a religiously homogenous municipality that answers to a guiding religious authority is illegal under the American Constitution.

It is important to recall that Kiryas Joel came about when a group of individuals purchased property in Orange County, N.Y. According to New York State law, “a territory of 500 or more inhabitants may incorporate” as a village if it so chooses. There is no litmus test about political belief or religious practice involved in this state regulation, simply the requirement of five hundred people. The rapid shift from a group of private citizens to a Hasidic public square in Kiryas Joel was thus executed in full compliance with the law. This is one of the reasons for our intentionally ironic claim that Kiryas Joel, a community of Satmar Hasidic Jews, is “as American as apple pie.”

It is the latter question that engaged us in our initial post. What we maintained then and reiterate now is that the claim that Kiryas Joel is a theocracy and thus in violation of American law is more complicated than meets the eye. The very features of the community that are deemed by its critics to be disturbing (its self-segregation and its illiberal culture) and the mechanisms whereby the community has secured those features (primarily through the acquisition of private property and the exercise of private property rights) are not as abnormal as we might think. Ironically enough, they may well be typical in the long course of American history. We offer this assessment neither in praise nor in condemnation, but in the name of historical and legal elucidation.

To be sure, the term “theocracy” is a loaded one in contemporary political discourse, largely because it is most commonly used to conjure up the fear of a radical, nuclear-tipped Islamic polity. The courts, certainly, have not given any fixed meaning to the term, and it remains unclear just what a “theocracy” is, let alone when, if ever, theocratic government is proscribed. What is clear is that American constitutional law does not necessarily condemn the establishment of governments by, for and of a particular (illiberal, religious) sub-community. American courts have repeatedly approved the formation of private self-governing enclaves by religiously homogeneous communities. Kiryas Joel thus falls into a long American tradition of robust support for religious sub-communities, a tradition that enables private communities to form and then, once formed, to translate their private power into political power. Judicial respect for the autonomy of religious sub-communities has been expressed in a number of important decisions, most notably, the case of Wisconsin v. Yoder (1972), in which the Supreme Court affirmed the right of the Amish to protect their insular, communitarian and pervasively religious way of life by not sending their children to school.
Read the Rest Here.

Chief Rabbi Lord Sacks was on Vatican Radio this week after his meeting with the Pope. Sacks is quite chipper about the future of British Jewry, the wonderful relations between Orthodox and liberal Jews in Britain, and the prospects for a two-state Middle East peace. In this interview, when asked if his interfaith views are Orthodox – he grounds his interfaith pluralism in the righteous non-Jews of the Bible (a shift from his book). His new point in this interview is that Jews have to love and forgive others, including the Catholic church. And that we are to treat them with the assumption that they love us. Nevertheless, I am disappointed that when the pope stated “his belief in our shared belief in the God of Abraham, our shared commitment to the Ten Commandments,” that Sacks did not say that we follow Torat Moshe and not the Pauline “faith of Abraham” and Jews don’t separate the ten commandments from the rest of Torah. It seems, he acquiesced to the religious language of the Catholics.

Lord Jonathan Sacks, Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregation of the Commonwealth, met with Pope Benedict on Monday to discuss interfaith relations and their common concern for the decline of spiritual values within European culture.

I’d like to ask you about your conversation with the Pope this morning – this was your 2nd meeting after you welcomed him to the interfaith meeting in Twickenham last September?

I had been asked to welcome him on behalf of the non-Christian faiths in Britain and it was actually a very moving encounter, I think we felt that something had happened at the moment and it was, you know, a sharing of faith across the boundaries and it was very moving. The Pope at the time told me he wanted to deepen that relationship so I felt this visit was a way of moving that a step further.

In the Jewish community we do not feel marginalized, we find more and more people coming to synagogue, more and more parents wanting to send their children to Jewish schools and the impression is growing that there is something lacking in the wider secular culture when all that matters is “what I am, what I spend, what I buy, what I earn” instead of “what I am” and I think parents are beginning to say we “don’t want that for our children, we want our children to learn about a much older and more spacious heritage”.

Were you able to discuss the current state of Jewish-Christian relations with the Pope today?

Well the Pope himself raised it and continually wanted to know how was that state of relationship in Britain, where in fact of course it’s as good as you’ll find anywhere in the world. He also wanted to know, just to reaffirm, his belief in our shared belief in the god of Abraham, our shared commitment to the Ten Commandments and our shared belief that society must have a spiritual dimension.

You’ve written a lot about interfaith relations, notably in your book ‘The Dignity of Difference’, yet in trying to reach out to other faiths you’ve been accused of heresy against traditional Orthodox teachings – what do you say to your accusers about the truth to be found in other religions?

Well, what is absolutely clear from the Bible is that you have some very godly individuals who are not part of the Abrahamic covenant. Famously you have Melchizedek, the contemporary of Abraham who is called by the Bible “the priest of the most high God”, you have Moses’ father-in-law Jethro, a Midianite priest, and, my favorite of all, which is Pharaoh’s daughter who, at great risk to herself, saves the young Moses. Without a Pharaoh’s daughter there wouldn’t be a Moses, so the Bible is not partisan at all in the way it sees righteousness and godliness. It sees it in all sorts of places.

Jewish attitudes towards the Catholic Church also seem to be divided with some applauding Benedict and John Paul before him for implementing the spirit of Nostra Aetate – others still seem to see the Church only in terms of the possible beatification of Pius XII and a perceived failure to apologise for not speaking out enough against the Holocaust?

My view is axiomatic and fundamental. The God of love and forgiveness created humanity in love and forgiveness, and asks of us to love and forgive others. And that is the attitude I bring to Jewish-Christian relations. And I hope it’s the attitude Christians bring to that same relationship. We recognize the extraordinary about-turn that occurred in the Catholic Church at really the inspiration and depth of compassion of Pope John XXIII, which set in motion the process that culminated in Vatican II, the result of which is that Jews and Catholics, having been estranged for many centuries, now meet again today as cherished and respected friends. You would find it hard to find a transition like that in the whole of European history. So I see the hope vastly outweighing the anxieties, and the good news vastly exceeding the bad.

Divisions between Liberal and Orthodox, reformists and traditionalists, in Judaism as well as within the Christian Churches, sometimes seem as damaging as the tensions between the different faiths – do you see an increasing polarisation within the Jewish world?

No, in Britain we have actually solved the problem, and we had to solve the problem because we cannot make peace with the world if we cannot make peace among ourselves. And when relationships got a little tense, some fifteen years ago, I sat down and said to myself “we have to develop fundamental principals of a relationship that has integrity.” In the end I formulated two principals – and they work. Number one: on all matters that affect us as Jews, regardless of our religious denomination we will work together regardless of our religious denomination. On all matters that touch on our differences, we will agree to differ, but with respect. The result of which is that orthodox and non-orthodox Jews in Britain are closer together today than they were at any other time, Of course, a famous Jew, Abba Eban, once said “we’re the people who can’t take yes for an answer”. So there are some people who have not quite caught up with reality, but the fact is that for the first time in history, I, as an orthodox chief rabbi, sit together with reform and liberal rabbis as joint presidents of the Council of Christians and Jews, and on inter-faith matters, as in all matters that touch on our common fate, we work together.

How much do you see the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict at the heart of these other problems in the Middle East and even behind the rise in anti-Semitism?

I refuse to accept that for one simple reason, and I tell this to my Muslim friends and I tell this to my friends of all faiths: we must be sending a message of coexistence from Europe to the Middle East. We must not allow ourselves to import a message of conflict from the Middle East to Europe. If the already difficult situation between Israelis and Palestinians is difficult enough in itself, that the whole of Europe should be made a proxy battle field for that conflict will not bring peace but on the contrary will devastate the outstandingly good relations that exist between the faiths in Europe.

The political process seems to be in stalemate there – do you see any signs of hope for an end to the conflict?

There is still a genuine majority on both sides in favor of a two state solution. And although the political process may have reached a momentary stalemate, as it seems to have done, nonetheless the underlying attitudes on both sides embolden my hope to believe that a peaceful settlement is possible and will be reached.

You’ve said you’ll be stepping down from your job in 2013 – what do your see as your most significant success over the years, what would you most like to be remembered for?

We tried to do three things and I think we succeeded. First, I made a pledge that we would increase the level and depth of Jewish education. And we have seen in twenty years the percentage of Jewish children at Jewish day-schools go-up from around 25-30% to nearly 70%. So we’ve built more Jewish day-schools in the last twenty years than at any previous time in our over 350 year history.

And finally, I took it on myself, as far as I could by just doing it, to allow the Jewish voice to be heard in the public square. I believe that Jews should not simply keep to themselves, we should seek to be a voice in the conversation of humankind, in fact I define Judaism as the voice of hope in the conversation of humankind. The British public has been quite extraordinarily warm in welcoming that sharing of Jewish wisdom and I believe we are all enriched when the great faiths share their wisdom with those of any faiths and those of none.
read the rest here

Roy quotes Bishop Roland Minnerath that entire swatches of Christianity are undergoing pseudo morphosis. A term from mineralogy where the minerals are changing only on the outside.
In this case, there is an outer casting of Christian words, rites and symbols but inside the mystery of God is absent. The core and soul of contemporary religion, and by this he means the committed engaged members are in their heart post-modern irrational, speaking of gnosis, sects, and new age. But no interest in God as transcendental creator and redeemer. (131) No shortage of Orthodox parallels.

For Roy, the current approach contains the loss of religious certainty since there is no culture to appeal to for norms, so that means that at any moment the legitimacy of a particular practice can be called into question. Now religious practices are no longer embedded in the surrounding culture – they have to be reinforced, imposed and explained. General culture, and even the culture of religious individuals is always disbelief. (134) We cannot trust general culture because it is the source of the immoralities of feminism and gays rights.

The Sociological believer is no longer recognized. Everyone now is born again, or takes the faith on as a personal acceptance. Roy deals with how conversion has gotten stricter in Islam. In the past one just affirms the Islamic faith and in good faith accepts that one is a Muslim. Now, it involves tests by imams on one’s beliefs and one’s standards of behavior. (136)

Everything is now them and us. There are no more sociological Christians, or sociological Orthodox Jews.
Personal faith must be declared and worn as a badge.

For Roy, Catholics seek to maintain culture, and evangelicals and Salafi Muslims ignore culture and create a holy ignorance. Orthodox Judaism seems to have both aspects.
Society always has romance, but in the past the distinction was good and bad representations. Now, it is faith as opposed to culture, precluding romance.

There is now established a minority separatist vision. The minority discourse is now explicit.- Don’t touch my community- they are adopting a communitarian attitude not one of reaching out.

Roy cites a 2007 article in the Yated apologizing for a prior article encouraging Jews to come together because we can never come together or have friendship with Non-Haredi Jews.
Roy cites the Noah Feldman case- were most of the articles written as a reaction were about safe guarding the Modern Orthodox community from slander rather than defending religious principles. (141)

“Everywhere defending the group’s identity and values takes precedence over social and pastoral concerns.” There is no participation in social service events because of the secular and liberal faiths that attend. People learn that the demarcation from the non-Orthodox counts more than performance of the rituals and prayer, and counts more than caring for people. (139)

Roy concludes that we now have faith communities that would not have been understood in the past. (142)
In the 1940’s -1950’s religions considered entering culture as a kind of vocation. They sought secular dress, had few complaints about culture, and taught that the goal was for religion to enter the profane. Since, now there is nothing positive in the profane culture, therefore one needs religious markers to separate those religious from this profane culture. Synthesis of religion and culture has given way to a separatist religious culture.
Roy shows that there is now a suspicion of religious knowledge itself and knowledge can distract from true faith. There is a greater emphasis now on revivalism, on emotions, and on the irrational.

As an interesting question, Roy asks how can all these believers who took on religions as a personal decision pass it on to the their children? How can the children of BT’s pass it on to the their kids?
Obliviously, the answer is that the kids need to be raised as part of a bigger stable culture bigger than the enthusiasm of the parent. Kids needs to be mainstreamed.
But what of the enthusiasm that the parents had? What if the kids contextualize their parent’s decision as just another fad of the 1970’s or 1980s?
Answer- the parents and community attempt reconnection, have calls for reconnection, and seek revival. The community creates new cultural markers of religious popular culture, such as religious rock, retreat weekends, religious videos. But Roy thinks that they are confusing cultural markers with culture. Instead, we have holy ignorance without real culture just popular culture. SO it wont work.
But what happens when the new generation loses their faith after having Holy ignorant parents? Roy claims that the younger generation that does not have the passion and personal commitment have a loss of faith and loss of observance without becoming socially integrated secular people. They remain in the religious culture because they have little connection to secular culture. (11-12)

In my last post Oliver Roy, Holy Ignorance Part II, I presented how Roy thinks that we have lost a sense of deviance. Roy cites the case of the community that acknowledges that the Church cannot permit married priests. That it wont change and wont ever change. Nevertheless, they want to keep their married priest because they love him as a pastor. Deviance reflects what people actually do, even as they at the same time want nothing to change.Even though I only posted on Roy earlier this week, I was reminded of it by a comment on a FB post in the midst of the discussion of same-sex marriages yesterday. I saw someone post on FB the following comment about “grey area” and asked permission to post it:

I have a friend who got his Flatbush Chassidishe rebbe to quietly witness and officiate a document between him and his “man friend” that was a slightly different thing from a ketuba. Gray area is out there, it’s just that the mainstream doesn’t want anyone to know about it It wasn’t a gay wedding. it probably happened in the rabbi’s study. It was very quiet and wasn’t an actual ketuba– some other similar document that was halachically binding.

Which got me thinking: There has been a noticeable greater acceptance over the last few years of same-sex couples here in this NJ bastion of Centrist Orthodoxy. There are openly same-sex couples who attend Orthodox shuls as a couple and accept Shabbat invites as a couple. So who did their commitment ceremonies? I assume they had a ceremony, so someone officiated.

Roy’s basic thesis is that secularism is great for religion because if secularism is seen as responsible for same-sex marriages then religious enthusiasm is all about creating a boundary to preserve one’s religious purity. The greater the general society is obsessed with items deemed pagan by the religious like sexual issues, the greater religion triumphs as a boundary creating response. Roy thinks that without the sense of transcendence then there is no other response to the secular. These boundary issues are now used as the sign of purity of community and who to write out of the community and are more important than prayer, study, or kindness. (128-129) Other violations like abuse, theft, and dishonestly are not seen as coming from secularism, so they cannot be used as a boundary issue. There is a begged premise that single sex marriage is from the pagan secular culture, and can therefore be used to show purity.

There has been a trend in the last 7-8 years to encourage Orthodox rabbis to be CEO’s of the congregation, get an MBA, learn how to control boards and build the metrics of your congregation. On the other hand, many of those who become pulpit rabbis in prior years who survived were “nice guys” they served as chaplains, visited the sick, counseled families, and maintained the status quo. The first group seeks power and eats smaller people for breakfast and the latter group is there as a family friend. Neither group seeks innovations in Judaism or Torah. They are two different sets of skills. In the recent Christianity Today, the major Evangelical magazine, one of the editors penned a nice push-back. Best line: “many clergy are fascinated with the idea that they can be leaders and entrepreneurs. These are the people our culture admires most”

Why We Need More ‘Chaplains’ and Fewer Leaders
What’s a pastor for?
Mark Galli | posted 12/01/2011 10:41AM

In my email recently came another list of suggestions on how to tell if your church is healthy. The warning signs of a sick church were lack of outreach ministries, increasing dropout rate, church conflict, little corporate prayer, and finally, the pastor has become a chaplain.
It’s becoming increasingly common to infer that when a pastor becomes a “chaplain,” the church is in trouble.

A Chaplain pastor is “wired for peace, harmony, and pastoral care. This is the type of pastor that has been produced by seminaries for several decades, though a few … a very few … seminaries are retooling. Chaplain pastors eschew change and value status quo. They don’t want to stir the waters; rather, they want to bring healing to hurting souls.” And if that weren’t bad enough, “Chaplain pastors don’t grow churches. In fact, a Chaplain pastor will hasten a congregation’s demise because they tend to focus on those within the congregation rather than in bringing new converts….”

We find ourselves in an odd period of church history when many people have become so used to large, impersonal institutions that they want that in their church as well.

A chaplain at a hospital or in the military is clearly not the highest ranking member of the institution, clearly not the person in charge of running things. The chaplain’s job is defined by service—service to the institution’s needs and goals, service to the individuals who come for spiritual help. The chaplain prays for people in distress, administers sacraments to those in need, leads worship for those desperate for God. In short, the chaplain is at the beck and call of those who are hurting for God. He’s not his own man.

There’s no mistaking a chaplain for an entrepreneurial leader, a catalyst for growth. No, the chaplain is unmistakably a servant.
In an increasingly secular, capitalist culture, it’s understandable that so many clergy are fascinated with the idea that they can be leaders and entrepreneurs. These are the people our culture admires most

When I was a pastor, I felt I gained more credibility with my church board—composed of mostly business people—when I could wax eloquent about the church’s “decadal growth” and the need to “target a young demographic” and create “revenue models” that would “ensure long-term stability” for the church.
Such is the culture we live in, where successful business people seem to enjoy really important work, and pastors, if they are not careful, will be chaplains, mere servants.
* * *
Eugene Peterson put it this way in The Contemplative Pastor: “The primary language of the cure of souls … is conversation and prayer. Being a pastor means learning to use language in which personal uniqueness is enhanced and individual sanctity recognized and respected. It is a language that is unhurried, unforced, unexcited—the leisurely language of friends and lovers, which is also the language of prayer.”

But the times I remember most, the times when my troubled soul has been most deeply affected and moved—outside of preaching and receiving the sacraments—have been when my pastor acted like a chaplain. When he pulled me aside in the narthex, put his arm around me, and prayed with me about some matter. When he visited me in the hospital. When in unhurried conversation I felt less alone, because I knew in a deeper way that God was present.
Some say that pastoral moments like these are like germs, and if we let such moments take over, they’ll make the church sick. I beg to differ. During such moments, the church is never more healthy. Read the Rest Here.

Mark Galli is senior managing editor of Christianity Today. He also blogs at http://www.markgalli.com.

Menachem Kellner has a negative review on H-Net of the Maimonides interpretation by Michah Goodman of Ein Prat in his Sodotav shel Moreh ha-Nevukhim (Secrets of the Guide of the Perplexed) (Or Yehuda: Dvir, 2010). And speculates from his very outside perspective why this may appeal to an Israeli generation looking for spirituality. The first half of the review is an irrelevant chatty view of the diversity of approaches to the Rambam.

Who is the Maimonides presented by Goodman? He is a Maimonides who has no “grand narrative,” a Maimonides for whom God is the greatest threat to religion, a Jewish thinker for whom the Torah comes to serve as therapy–the main aim of the Torah according to Goodman’s Maimonides is to heal human beings, not to grant them philosophic certainty, since there can be no certainty about the central doctrines of religion (the nature or even existence of God, creation, providence and human suffering, among others). For Goodman’s Maimonides the Torah is only divine in the sense that Moses understood the nature of reality better than any previous human. For the Midrash, God looked into the Torah in order to create the world, while for Goodman Moses, as it were, looked into the mind of God in order to write the Torah.

The upshot of all this is to place human beings firmly at the center of philosophic attention (the culmination of a process which began with Descartes’ cogito–which is one of the many reasons I have trouble reading Maimonides in the same way that Goodman does). Goodman’s Maimonidean hero inherits all the roles traditionally ascribed to God, designing his/her own life, world, and consciousness. This heroic (Nietszchian?) human also takes control of the Torah, the text of which is no longer authoritative, since the interpreter takes control of the text. For Goodman, Maimonides no longer guides the reader out of perplexity; rather, he accompanies the reader on the route to perplexity (since only the philosophically unsophisticated individual can confront God and the cosmos without perplexity). Only the self-deluded think they have achieved certainty, and self-delusion is the greatest sin; hence, one assumes, for Goodman’s Maimonides–and quite clearly for Goodman himself–enlightenment of a certain type (acknowledging what Albert Camus would have called the absurd nature of the universe) is the highest virtue. Maimonides, who single-handedly created Jewish dogmatics, is presented as the greatest opponent of what Goodman calls the “dogmatic trap” (thinking you know what you cannot know).

Throughout this stimulating book Goodman uses language which, I fear, misleads many of his readers. He uses terms such as eros, sod, pardes, maskil, and expressions, such as the “redemptive character of knowledge,” and “spiritual journeys,” all of which mean very specific (and limited) things in a Maimonidean context, but which to a contemporary reader carry with them heavy overtones of Kabbalah. I am confident that Goodman does not mean to mislead, and equally confident that that is precisely what happens–and reading Maimonides in this mildly Kabbalistic key may be part of the explanation for the book’s success.

So, what sort of Maimonides does Goodman present to his reader? Simply put, a postmodernist, anti-Leibowitzian Maimonides (it is only after two-thirds of the book have passed that Goodman lets this cat explicitly out of the bag, insisting that his book is meant to save the true Maimonides from what one might call the hypermodernist reading of Yeshayahu Leibowitz). Leibowitz (1903-94), Israel’s most prominent pubic intellectual during the last third of the twentieth century, attributed to Maimonides (with some degree of justification) a Judaism in which God is entirely at the center, the Torah does not at all serve the needs of human beings (since it fundamentally involves a demand to live a holy, God-centered life, and has no binding theology). In Goodman’s presentation, we have a Maimonides for whom “the quest for certainty”–which, according to Abraham Joshua Heschel, motivated R. Sa’adia Gaon and subsequent medieval Jewish philosophers (emphatically including Maimonides)–is replaced with a quest for perplexity. In reading Maimonides in this fashion Goodman understands and presents him in terms appropriate to much of the contemporary weltanschauung. This is certainly one of the reasons for the book’s great success.

But there is more going on here than this. Sitting in shul this week I noticed a young man, recently married (and who has chosen to defer army service to spend more time in yeshiva), reciting the amidah prayer with his tallit over his head (rare in our circles) and with every indication of profound involvement in his prayer. Looking up from reading Micah Goodman’s book during the recitation of An’im Zemirot, one of the most “spiritual” passages in the liturgy, I noticed that this young man was also reading–a volume of Talmud. It struck me that standard Israeli Orthodoxy has no answer for a person seeking spiritual fulfillment: it is not that Orthodox Jews are necessarily spiritually unfulfilled, but that the spiritual fulfillment they find would be unrecognizable to anyone who looks for sublimity in mystically inspired poems like An’im Zemirot, rather than in abstruse Talmudic discussions.

Anyone familiar with Israel today is struck by the huge variety of alternative “spiritualities” on offer. These reflect a deep yearning for meaning on the part of many Israelis. Some satisfy this need by dropping out in Southeast Asia; others through adoption of Jewish Orthodoxy, including the eccentricity of Bratzlav; and yet others through the many varieties of non-standard religions which now dot the Israeli landscape. Indeed, my own university (Haifa) is running a huge conference (for the third year in a row) on new religious phenomena in Israel. Goodman’s Maimonides–skeptical, almost agnostic, latudinarian in consequence if not in intent, and therapeutic–taps into this yearning. Micah Goodman’s Maimonides is not my Maimonides, but his Maimonides certainly demonstrates the perennial significance of the Great Eagle for Jews (and perhaps, for Judaism). Read the Rest here.

This post is continued from Part I here. I will start from the middle of the book where he deals with the change to religion even when embedded in a territorial enclave. This thread will be 4-5 posts. I am delighted to have Prof. Ferziger reading along to help discuss whether Roy’s theories match the Orthodox community. My comments are limited to the American community. So after reading it, does it apply to Orthodoxy? Which parts?

Roy thinks that in the 1970s-1980’s there was a turn to religion that could be considered a mass conversion, people re-affirmed their faith. People now become reborn, re-committed, and choose to stay religious even when their peers or siblings did not. In the Jewish case, people become Orthodox as choosing Orthodox over their Conservative upbringing, as BT, as actual converts, and as finding the Shabbos table or the learning appealing. The category of sociological believer disappeared for those who became religious. No longer were you Orthodox just because your parents belonged to an Orthodox synagogue. (It may be returning and I will deal with that in a later post.)

Roy thinks that there are four elements to religion and culture: religious markers, norms, religiosity, and theology.
Religious Markers are movable sign that show one’s allegiance to one group and rejection of another. Many of the debates of dress code or whose kosher supervision are demarcation of one’s community.
Norms are the ethics, morals, and values. Roy discusses how in the 19th century – even when France was becoming atheistic – the Christian and secular schools had the same basic values. There was a convergence on sexual abstinence, hard work and discipline. Now we have divergent values on sexuality where abstinence is no longer preached in secular culture, so sexuality becomes the marker of secular versus religious communities. The marker is more important than actual statistics. A secular math major is more likely abstinent than the revivalist teen who is likely to have children out of wedlock.
Religiosity is the lived inner world of religious feeling and the way believers define themselves with outside world. Threat of the outside or need for salvation. Are they separatist, good neighbor or humanistic.
Theology- are the beliefs, doctrines, laws, and edicts as passed down by the millennium as they are discussed in the classic books, interpretive communities are created and texts are interpreted. For Roy, most of the flashpoints and controversial issues discussed are not in the theology/halakhah group but in the religious marker group. Specific practices are isolated and used to demarcate, when they never had that function in the past.

Roy thinks that culture always has the marginal and deviances. Even religious communities had the misfits, the fools, the brothel, the period of carnival, homosexual behavior, and addiction. There were always outlets for mockery without upsetting system, places and times to sin without questioning the bigger system. The community, diocese or kehillah knew that it needed to be managed not restricted. People were also not expected to police the private life. Hypo-crisy is the sense of a low critical sense of the margins was always tolerated.

Roy’s new point is that the new religious societies of the last few decades suppress the marginal elements and deviations – they seek a purity of standard because one has converted or joined the group. If one did not want to keep the rules then one did not have to join. According to Roy, therefore the new communities , if they stay the way they are, are permanently instable because there will always be deviants. On the simple level- the meme of half-shabbos went viral because Orthodox Jews assumed or fantasied that once they choice to be frum then all future decedents will share their 1975 or 1990 moment of commitment to purity. Roy has more to say: “the conviction that all members of a society must explicitly share one belief system is absurd and can only result in permanent coercion.” If one is seeking purity then there will be doubt and suspicion of other people. Traditional society avoided an all or nothing approach by accepting sin. Think of the mussar books or Rav Nahman. One can no longer give a sermon that everyone is sinner even though that is the reality, but because we focus on religious marker of belonging or exclusion. There is a greater Calvinism even in Orthodox Judaism in that one is either saved or not; I cannot give a speech calling everyone a sinner or a sheketz anymore and preach that mussar is the means to right oneself. Sin is only outside the religious community. And virtue is only in the community. (111)

Roy thinks that secularization by itself does not change values. Even if one loses one’s belief then one can continue to have the same values. Roy thinks that this recent wave of religion has lead to an exculturation – when the religious no longer identify with the surrounding culture. It is no longer a place of synthesis but of fighting to keep the values of culture out.

In the past, the religious and the secular as well as the government shared values of a good life, good neighbors, educated and prosperous community. Roy arguing from his area of expertise shows how Islamic law did not negate the well-being of the social, intellectual, and economic realms. Islamic rulers reigned in shaariah by restricting it in certain areas, giving it loose interpretations, and by modeling it on and working with western law. In contrast, the new demand for shaariah is an abstraction w/o history and culture and without the actual working of community and law. You can say the law is whatever you want when it has no direct application to ruling a country. Islamic law becomes an alternative value system to outside pagan culture; a religious marker and not a religious law. If a religious law does not have a common horizon with society in a synthesis way then it is a religious marker and alternative value system. Much of this has similarities to the new formulations of halakhah. (113-115)

This return to religion separates religion and culture and creates religious markers isolated from any historical context, and a sharp break of believers and non-believers. Roy argues that real religion was never pure or isolated. Secular, other faiths, and deviants could define terms and give expression to religious words. The Jewish Enlightenment, Jewish literature, academia, and romantic appropriations were all once readily accepted. The meanings of Jewish thought, Halakhah, Hasidism, Midrash, or Talmud were defined by Buber, Agnon, Scholem, Yerushalmi, Idel or Menachem Alon- now there is a trend to limit the true meaning to those in the religious camp. They own the words. They can even ban the other side from using their proprietary words. For example Muslims in Malaysia are banning the use of the word Allah by Christians and Buddhists even though it was a linguistic or cultural use. I am sure that many Orthodox would ban the use of words such as halakhah by Reform Jews and they would not, if they knew, want to get their Hasidism from Buber. (118-119)

Chastity and abstinence were the religious norm in the Middle Ages and therefore the actual transgressions were a marginal problem because they did not challenge the system. People who transgressed knew they were deviants. In contrast, in the contemporary era sexuality is now a positive value for everyone. The ideals of marriage have changed for everyone and media and the internet keeps culture and religion on the same page. So in this current world, the Catholic Church’s voice and the haredi voice is inaudible. Therefore they are incongruent with current values against asceticism and abstinence. Roy claims that what used to be on the margins is now out in public. People display and coming out about their sexual orientation, there are pressure groups for acceptance of people’s orientations, and a shrinking of the private sphere.

Currently, people demand acceptance of their individuality and authenticity of their decisions. The same argument used by contemporary religion to argue for its acceptance. On the questions of the new sexual ethic and gay marriage, religion blames the pagan culture-it blames materialism, pornography, and selfish pleasure. In contrast, Roy argues that this is a fallout from the split of culture and religion, therefore the scandal is permanent. There is no realm of deviance in religion anymore to tolerate these changes, religious society always had its sinners. So when there are religious markers against sexuality or gay marriage they appear not as references from a past culture or the glory of noble traditions rather, they appear as dictates from a religious hierarchy devoid of pedagogy.

Roy gives two cases: The first case is that of a rural priest with family, which is clearly against the Church’s celibacy laws. But the local parishioners were all in favor of keeping him as their clergy because he was good at the job, they wanted an allowance for deviance. His second case are chastity rings or vows of abstinence that do not and cannot work to attain purity because of the gap of religion and the new culture.

On a more controversial note, Roy sees the problem of gay marriage not as a result of secularism but of religion’s removal of culture, there is no longer any realm for deviance. According to Roy, homosexuality made one of the greatest cultural shifts. It went from criminalized in the 1960’s to currently protected and to consider rejection of it as hate speech. It is now out in the open so this new religious world cannot assimilate it so it becomes a major religious marker. There are homophobic campaigns and anti-feminist campaigns. (125-6) These become the major signs of us versus them and religious demarcation. They are now used a the sign of purity of community more than prayer, study, or kindness. (128-129)

On a completely different note, Roy cites an Italian proverb that “a translator is a traitor” Judiasm has similar quotes on translation as kissing through a veil. Roy thinks that the new religiosity loves translation because it allows one to dodge the historical and cultural resonances of the text. The sacred text is now outside the cultural realm. Historical, linguistic, and literary knowledge is unnecessary if one has the correct religious purity of doctrine. The cultural realm of the clarity of writing is lost. In addition, one can portray past eras of history as entirely in conformity with the current vision of religious purity. (138)

To be continued in Part III

I am so far behind in blogging that I am just getting to a book that I announced back in May that I would be discussing. The book is Olivier Roy, Holy Ignorance and if you read one new social science book on religion in 2011, then this is it. He deals with the rise of evangelicals, Islamists, and Haredim in the last quarter century. He pushes the field forward for the 21st century by writing from a post-Certeau and Bourdieu perspective.

This post has linked to the major popular reviews and a post later this week will deal with my opinions on him. I am not sure if I agree with everything he says but he is worth the read.

Roy offers a unique explanation of the rise of fundamentalism. He thinks that fundamentalism grew because of secularism. The more secularism grew and emptied civil society of common values then the more religion grew disenchanted with society. Once religion was not concerned with society, then there is no more a quest for synthesis or integration of religion and culture. The more that secular society can be portrayed as materialistic, hedonistic, licentious and pagan then the more people flee into the hands of religion, a religion that owes no allegiance to the culture at large.

In the past, there were three ways of treating the world of culture: (1) the profane -where it did not affect or impinge on the holy (2)the secular- where it can be combined with religion (3) the pagan, where it need to be kept out of our life’s. Roy’s point is that in the last few decades the world moved from the category of the secular to that of the pagan. Synthesis of Torah and secular has given was to a view that religion is a safeguard and savior from the secular.

The new faith of fundamentalism is outside of the former world of traditional texts, study, and religious cultural. Now it is an empty series of religious markers to show one has allegiance to the correct group. Hence, the title of the book Holy Ignorance, without culture then one is ignorant. The truth is direct from God, without knowledge, outside of theology, linguistics, or culture. Language conventionally brings culture, but in this rejection of profane culture, even religious knowledge is suspected.

At the same time, Roy thinks fundamentalist religion is all about the self since the decision to be pure as a salafi or baal teshuvah is autonomous self and not submission to a traditional culture. No one is concerned with the classic issues of a transcendent deity – the God of creation, reward, or revelation, or morals. People want the psychological feeling of absolute purity of doctrine.
Roy shows that with the lack of concern with culture, then the religion is a trans-national, age of globalization abstraction. The vision of the local clergy, the community, and the tradition are negated before an abstracted true religion. The new religious fervor claims the rights of multi-culturalism and freedom to impose fundamentalism as their post-moderns secular right. Religions have “reformatted” themselves as global faiths rather than expressions of national culture or as an outgrowth of a community.

The concepts of Jewish culture or Reform Judaism as well as cultural and political Muslims, and cultural Catholics has lead the faithful to exculturate- to leave culture or to leave it to these half-baked religious. Religion is now a small sect removing itself from the cultural versions of itself. For example, the halakhic observer of Hanukah is in many cases rarified away from the many cultural forms of Chunukah in NY. The cultural forms are no longer seen as religious. Mediating cultural and religion is now seen as secular before a pure halakhic faith.

A strong example of Roy’s perspective is that we have lost the medieval sense of the need for celibacy and chastity. Culture now has an anything goes attitude but religion rather than arguing to return to the medieval virtues is instead creating flashpoint wedge issues like gay marriage. The religious believers are not based on the original puritanical texts but instead are creating new and ungrounded ways to remove themselves from pagan culture. One fights sinful culture but does not seek to create a new religious theology of the body. “the Haredim of Jerusalem invent a kosher Internet even as they try to shut down the last movie theater in their neighborhood.” But no thoughtful approach to the internet.

Roy has much on conversion to faith, a category that for him includes those who chose to stay religious, those who are BT’s, and those creating new institutions to attract people to the new global faith. His entire conclusion to the book is to question how a returnee to faith can pass it to his children. “How can one be born from a born-again?”, Roy wonders. (This may get it’s own post.)

Alan Wolfe, an expert in Evangelicals, reviewed it favorably in the NYT.

Actually, as the brilliant French social scientist Olivier Roy points out in “Holy Ignorance,” it is those defending Christmas who are not being true to their traditions and teachings. There are no Christmas dinners in the Bible, which is why America’s Puritans, strict adherents of what that venerated text offers, never sat down by the raging fire awaiting St. Nick; indeed, they briefly banned Christmas in Massachusetts.

Yule as we celebrate it today owes more to Charles Dickens than to Thomas Aquinas. Our major solstice holiday is what Roy calls a “cultural construct” rather than a sectarian ceremony, which explains why Muslims buy halal turkeys and Jews transformed Hanukkah into a gift-giving occasion. Mistakenly believing that Christmas is sacred, those who defend it find themselves propping up the profane. The Christ they want in Christmas is a product not of Nazareth but of Madison Avenue.

Over the past few years, a number of theories have been offered about the rise of fundamentalism. Roy proposes the most original — and the most persuasive. Fundamentalism, in his view, is a symptom of, rather than a reaction against, the increasing secularization of society. Whether it takes the form of the Christian right in the United States or Salafist purity in the Muslim world, fundamentalism is not about restoring a more authentic and deeply spiritual religious experience. It is instead a manifestation of holy ignorance, Roy’s biting term meant to characterize the worldview of those who, having lost both their theology and their roots, subscribe to ideas as incoherent as they are ultimately futile. The most important thing to know about those urging the restoration of a lost religious authenticity is that they are sustained by the very forces they denounce.

It is true, he concedes, that conservative religion is growing. But any talk of a religious revival is “an optical illusion.” Religion, he writes, “is both more visible and at the same time frequently in decline.” It cedes so much to the secular world that it can no longer offer a transcendental alternative to it.

If religion is in decline in the modern world, Roy argues, so is culture. On the one hand, we have multiculturalism, celebrations of diversity that somehow wind up making all cultures look and feel alike. More important, we face globalization, today’s true universal faith, which subjects all local customs to the laws of the market. Under the influence of both, religion loses whatever affinities it may once have had with the cultures that sustained it.

With the rise of Pentecostalism, one of the fastest-growing religions in the world, followers are encouraged to speak in tongues, which requires no language at all. Meanwhile television and the Internet contribute to fundamentalism’s appeal; both make it possible for Egyptian imams (preaching no doubt in “globish,” the pidgin form of English that emerges wherever globalization takes root) to reach their followers in Europe. One does not know whether to be in awe of faith’s capacity to adapt or distraught by the hodgepodge that enables it to do so. “The Holy Spirit,” Roy writes, “is anywhere and everywhere. There is no need to have a real rock on which to build the Church.”

(In subsequent work, Roy argues, I believe convincingly, that the ideology currently governing Iran or motivating Hamas has more to do with nationalism than with religion.)

UK Times discusses Roy’s distinction between Catholics and Protestants in the new era. Catholics still try for incultuation and synthesis, but the more successful Evangelicals see belief as entirely above culture in any sense.

But as Olivier Roy argues in Holy Ignorance, religious fundamentalism and secularising modernity are much more closely linked than is often appreciated. In fact, it is not just that “secularization has not eradicated religion”, he argues, but that secularisation has worked as “we are witnessing … the militant reformulation of religion in a secularized space that has given religion its autonomy”.

The contrast between Roman Catholicism and Protestantism is particularly instructive for Roy. Catholicism has historically made concerted attempts to respond to new cultures, as in the development of syncretic practices through South American and African missionary work. This has not been a uniform process but the general tendency has been in the direction of “inculturation”, creating a very close connection between, for example, Brazilian culture and Catholicism. In contrast, Protestantism has tended to emphasise a universalist kind of missionary activity, creating a much more uniform practice.

Holy Ignorance does not rely on an essentialist view of particular religions, but on a wider argument about the place of religion in a secularising modernity.

As religion breaks free from its local manifestations, it becomes more easily transplanted to other locations. Fundamentalist forms of religion do this most successfully. Unanchored in the constraints of tradition and local culture, fundamentalism recognises no limitation and hence comes to view everything outside itself as pagan and impure. This is the “holy ignorance” that Roy identifies and warns us of.
But, if nothing else, this extraordinary book’s disturbing message – that secularism may be religious fundamentalism’s best friend – is worth taking very seriously.

Holy Ignorance: When Religion and Culture Part Ways
By John L. Murphy 18 March 2011

Roy sums up the challenge: “Either religion is reduced to culture, or it has to separate itself from culture (in any case from Western culture) to assert its universality.”

Cultural diversity, therefore, competes against religious claims to lift a message (as in Islam or Christianity) above its origins to save all men and women. Judaism and Hinduism mingle the ethnic and religious identities, so an atheist Jew may not be surprising, but if an atheist Muslim wishes to declare himself such, as at least one author listed here has, the fact of his Tunisian birth may be the reason that he has proclaimed his status only after moving to France. In turn, that nation, Roy reminds us, has 70 percent of its citizens claiming Catholicism, but only five percent practice the faith traditionally associated with its dominant culture for over 1,500 years.

Four reactions define historic and current responses by religion as it seeks to survive within its milieu. First, deculturation occurs when Christians try to wipe out indigenous faiths, or when orthodox Islam dominates the Indian subcontinent. Acculturation happens when the Jews of the Enlightenment adapt mainstream European values, or as India’s natives integrate Christian or Islamic influences. Inculturation places liberation theology at the center of Latin American’s indigenous ideologies. Finally, exculturation marks the Catholic or evangelical reactions we witness, as these powers fight a rearguard action against a worldly set of values that are now on the ascendant.

Roy intersperses case studies from across the world, mostly in the Eurasian realms, to show the situations that illustrate these changes. Christmas as celebrated with a Yule log by the hearth was not the old custom, but a new one invented in the wake of Dickens, and this “traditional” festival replaced the churchgoing that drew worshipers out into the cold air to walk down to their local church. Central Asians may demand to become Christians within an Islamic society; African-Americans may adopt Arab names while Arab immigrants may shed theirs when settling into America. Outcries over priestly celibacy and pedophilia and homosexuality and abortion command so much attention now because the core values that Catholicism proclaimed had, until recently, pushed opposing views on sexuality, individual freedom, and fidelity to the margins. In the heartlands of Islam, as Roy documents, similar protests remain marginalized, and therefore weaker.

Religious defenders react in three ways. First, they may regard the competing culture as “profane”, and look down upon it. The ultra-orthodox Jewish man may speak to God in Hebrew and to his family in Yiddish; the religious signifier separates from the everyday means of communication. Next, the religious movement may see the state as “secular”, and regard it as parallel in function, as in the model of the First Amendment’s separation of powers. The third approach treats the secular society as did the early Christians that of Rome: as the “pagan” enemy.

Nowadays, these “pagans” may enact, as in Western Europe, Canada, or the United States, laws that tolerate but supervise religions as to be accommodated without state favoritism. Religious adherents, from their dissenting perspective, get treated by secular, non-discriminatory laws as a sub-culture, perhaps relegated alongside other “minorities”, such as the gays or feminists whom they often oppose.

This social downsizing spurs religious proponents into an assault on “materialism, pornography, and selfish pleasure” as the new idols. The reaction to California’s Proposition 8 banning gay marriage in 2008, or the trials of gays in Cairo in 2001, marks as deviant those authorities or subversives trying to impose secular, ‘godless’, and so-called ‘sinful’ practices upon the community of believers. While such breaks from tradition tend to be perceived as sudden, Roy locates them in earlier disconnections between the majority in a culture who in fact lose interest in the dominant religion well before the exculturation process erupts into a radical-reactionary counter-movement. Reform Jews, mainstream Protestants, and assimilating Catholics, for instance, had already been lapsing from strict doctrinal interpretation decades before Prop. 8 galvanized conservatives to rally within those denominations.

Puritanical sects resent the dominant culture. Early Protestants sought separation, as this represented first a fall from Eden into the world, and second the taint of an imaginative Catholic sensibility that had piled up non-Biblical accretions that shoved an individual away from an encounter with Scripture. Roy notes how the Puritans did not celebrate Christmas, as it was not sanctioned in Holy Writ. Their spiritual heirs now flocking to evangelical storefront churches in the barrios or to suburban megachurches share a wish to separate from the immoral majority. Salafi Muslims long to revive the community as it was with the Prophet, before even theology arrived to dilute Islam. The Taliban ban television and videos; the Haredim of Jerusalem invent a kosher Internet even as they try to shut down the last movie theater in their neighborhood.

How does the title of this book align with Roy’s viewpoint? “Holy ignorance” recalls the Pentecostal “speaking in tongues”, as this obliterates the language and favors the unmediated, untranslatable Word. The Word inhabits the believer, and its truth transmits directly from God to penitent, without knowledge, outside of theology, linguistics, or culture. Language conventionally brings culture, but in this rejection of profane culture, even religious knowledge is suspected of interference with the primary need for an individual’s salvation.

Justin Jaron Lewis. Imagining Holiness: Classic Hasidic Tales in Modern Times. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2009. x + 351 pp. $49.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-7735-3519-0.
Gedalyah Nigal. The Hasidic Tale. Oxford: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2008. viii + 383 pp. $65.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-1-904113-07-2.

Reviewed by Alan Brill (Seton Hall University)
Published on H-Judaic (November, 2011)
Commissioned by Jason Kalman

The Hasidic Tale Revisited pdf here

Martin Buber created a genre called the “Hasidic Tale,” which consisted of folktales told of Hasidic rabbis teaching the hallowing of the everyday and living in the ineffable moment. In his important book Imagining Holiness, Justin Jaron Lewis argues against the very existence of such a genre. In the past, critics of Buber took issue mainly with his romantic rereading of the stories. In contrast, Lewis points out that the correct genre was “praises of rabbis and holy men,” a genre of hagiography that incorporated stories and teachings of non-Hasidic rabbinic figures, including Rabbi Moshe Isserles, Rabbi Shlomo Luria, the Vilna Gaon, and other halakhic greats.Lewis shows that these stories do not reflect folk wisdom or the ineffable moment. Rather, they spring from a world that Lewis could refer to as “Hasidic-maskil.” The authors were communal rabbis raised in the Talmudic world of Gur, Belz, and Satmar who practiced scrupulous ritual performance, but who read Haskole, Yiddish, and German literature on the side.

Lewis focuses on two authors whose works served as major sources for Buber. Rabbi Israel Berger, born in 1855, served as rabbi in Bucharest and Rabbi Abraham Hayim Simhah Bunem Michelson, born in 1886, served as rabbi in Plotzk. Both served on rabbinic courts and had to deal with rapid secularization, fractional differences, and relinquishment of observance among youth raised in traditional communities. Rather than focus solely on traditional values, their books both resisted and mediated modernity, positioned Hasidism as authentic even as they integrated modern themes, and were part of a literature for the rabbinic class that incorporated modern literacy trends. Berger even took liberties to occasionally explicitly mention such Enlightened books as Eliezer Zweifel’s Shalom al Yisrael (Peace in Israel [1873]) and Aron Marcus’s German volume Der Chassidismus (Hassidism [1901]). Lewis approvingly cites Karl Erich Grozinger, who argues that the source of the stories is pre-Hasidic folklore; therefore, the stories can still address broader cultural themes

The first part of Lewis’s book, consisting of thirty-five pages of translated, selected, and explained stories and poems, would have better served as an appendix. The second part consists of a discussion of previous scholarly literature on historical, literary, and editorial questions on Hasidic tales asked by Gershon Scholem, Jospeh Dan, Chone Shmurek, David Assaf, Gedalyah Nigal, and others. The basic thesis of the book is that these stories were literary constructs portraying the way the authors imagined holiness. They convey an imaginary sense of unity among the Jewish rabbinic leadership and suggest overcoming ideological difference. The stories clearly had a very different status than holy books. They were the popular literature of a disempowered minority, not true folklore nor scholarship. The same stories could be told, or imagined, about different rebbes because there was a single ideal of the holiness. It is only in later generations of retellings that there is an emphasis on the individuality of each rebbe.

As authors, both began publishing at the start of the twentieth century. And the motivation seems to have been financial. There was a market among the newly literate for popular literature. Lewis compares it to the penny literature or chapbooks in England and India, where the masses consumed poorly edited tales of murder and the supernatural. Here too, the Hasidic tale has blurred lines of vulgar Yiddish literature (shund), romance, and Hasidic teachings. Berger and Michelson solicited their rabbinic acquaintances to mail them stories of great rabbis to be printed. The editors did not concern themselves with prior publication of the stories or modernist elements added to the collected stories. Lewis notes that both authors were still writing from this perspective despite the major ideological changes of their era. They were looking backwards to the older order, the great era of oligarchic, rabbinic families and not to the new answers of Zionists, Bundists, the civil rights party, or communists.

Lewis considers stories that denigrate enlightened Jews or that strain credibility in the use of unbelievable miracles as proof that the stories still addressed a religiously observant audience. In contrast, we should consider how similar miracle tales served Catholics as nostalgia points for modernizing believers eager to affirm that they still believed in miracles despite dropping religious practice or adopting a scientific worldview that precludes miracles. In this case, the miracle tale spoke to the Jews who wanted to show that their secularism was not as a brazen skeptic rather as one who retains yiddishkeit (Jewishness) in their hearts.

This introduction is followed by eight short chapters on themes useful for dispelling the genre of Hasidic stories, overcoming myths of Hasidic culture as equalitarian, this-worldly, or anti-rabbinic. Lewis offers three chapters showing the importance of Torah study, halakhah, and the rabbinic orthodox culture for the stories. He also shows that the stories are vehement in their denouncement of the nonreligious and the nonobservant. He spends four chapters showing that rabbis are not similar to Buber’s portrayal of them as life affirming and living in the present moment. In Hasidic stories, materiality or corporeality (gashmius) “is one of the most negatively laden words” (p. 207). It is “a particular kind of engagement with material existence, aiming for transformation of one’s sensory being, in line with a profoundly vertical, hierarchal cosmology and a judgmental stance toward human activities and emotions” (p. 263).

Hasidic rabbis are portrayed as using food for magical and supernatural purposes. They sought an otherworldly purity and engaged in “bodily action which produce[d] a physical result through mysterious means” (p. 215). Since the Hasidic stories model themselves on Talmudic tales, it was natural for Lewis to make use of Daniel Boyarin’s method for explaining them.

Lewis points out that the stories portray a male-dominated world in which women were of a lower order. In the same vein, the attitude in the stories toward non-Jews was hostile and dismissive. It is important to note also that “the Hasidic imagination accepts some level of cruelty to children” (p. 253). In addition, Lewis shows that Hasidic rebbes acted toward each other with anger, spite, rivalry, and controversy.

One of the more interesting chapters in this section includes stories reflecting on anxiety about circumcision and the views of it as dangerous. They dealt with their doubts and tensions about circumcision, which could scarcely be expressed openly in Hasidic culture through stories. Lewis cites anthropologists who claim stories can express doubts in a community without causing a religious crisis.

Lewis’s book is a valuable study, however, as a revised dissertation there is little follow-up on the many ideas proposed in the book. Lewis works from a folkloric perspective and, unfortunately, does not have the background in the thick forest of Polish Orthodox rabbinic culture to fully and accurately document his ideas. These same authors wrote responsa and sermons, and were engaged in community work at the rabbinic court.

In contrast to Lewis’s work, Nigal’s book The Hasidic Tale has the needed erudition in Eastern European culture and can also provide parallels in earlier Jewish literature. Nigal, emeritus professor at Bar-Ilan University, has already edited several annotated editions of early twentieth-century collections of Hasidic tales. His book was originally published in Hebrew (2005) and expanded into an English edition.

The majority of the work is the index card collection of a senior scholar who has clearly devoted his life to the topic, combing the treasures of the Jewish National and University Library. The minutia in the text even includes discussions of how the copies are bound together in the Jerusalem National library. The introduction on the nature of Hasidic storytelling and chapter 1, which is concerned with the history of the Hasidic story, are the sole theoretical sections of the large book.

In the introduction, Nigal devotes himself to defining the genre of Hasidic tales. He defines the innovation of the Hasidic tale as “the first Jewish literary genre to focus on exemplary individuals and their followers” (p. 1). These stories are about the Hasidic zaddik, who is held in sanctified status by the masses for his ability to help simple folk. For Nigal, the important parts of these stories are the wondrous acts and powers of the rebbe. Simple people come with a problem and it is thus solved by the zaddik. These stories brought hope to the common people who could not see a way out of their predicaments. Tales about Hasidic leaders and their mystical powers attracted followers to the Hasidic court and maintained their devotion. Since the focus is on the rebbe, the stories contain no landscape or nature. They do, however, contain universal human desires and a quest for returning wonder to those skeptical of the rebbes.

In general, Nigal leaves it to the early twentieth-century editors of the volumes to provide their own internal definitions. The editors thought these volumes of stories contained profound ideas, caused repentance, strengthened the service of God, and fortified belief in miracles. Nigal cites those editors who rejected any connection of these stories to the haskole (Enlightenment) or Yiddish literature, and those who even rejected seeing an analogous collection process. Yet he also cites Abraham Hazan, the collector of Breslov traditions, who stated about the other early twentieth-century collections that “most of the stories were told while drinking wine with the teller standing between the third and fourth cup–nine parts are false” (p. 69). Nigal simply cites the criticism and does not investigate or weigh claims about stories because “it is difficult to identify innovations” (p. 75). Nigal seems to favor the explanation given by the twentieth-century editor, Menachem Mendel Bodek, that these stories offer a remedy for sadness, giving hope and solace to those suffering economic or social calamity.

The first chapter is on the history of the Hasidic tale. Rather than viewing the stories as an urban literary invention, Nigal sees an ideology already implicit in early Hasidism of the holiness of mundane talk, preachers using parables, and the influence of the stories of the Besht and Rav Nahman. Nigal also emphasizes the stories told in the courts of Rizhin, and Komarno, as well as the reliability of the modern genre created by Michael Levi Rodkinsohn (Frumkin). Nigal casts his net wider among twentieth-century collectors than Lewis by including among others Menachem Mendel Sofer, Berger, Michelson, Abraham Isaac Sobelman, Shlomo Gavriel Rosenberg, and Aaron Walden. Nigal leaves out biographies of the editors and bibliography of tales from Chabad and Breslov even though he freely cites them in the notes.

Nigal repeatedly writes that he takes these stories as true, especially if the editors stated that they personally heard it. Nigal takes these professions of veracity at face value, then proceeds to provide copious references showing the parallels and almost word-for-word similarities in Midrashic texts, Sefer Hasidim (The Book of the Pious), Maaseh Books (Judeo-German books of tales), Christian folktales, tales of Isaac Luria, or Yiddish literature. He acknowledges direct and indirect influence of narrative material from Jewish and non-Jewish sources, but he does not think that this deflects from their veracity. Nigal ignores his own footnotes on the percentage of stories told about non-Hasidic rabbis in these collections.

The majority of the book consists of thematic studies reflecting the social reality. Chapter 2 is on the prophetic powers of the zaddik. Chapter 3 is on matchmakers, marriage, and collecting for bridal dowries. Chapter 4 is on the blessing of having children including the difficulties of labor, and chapter 5 is on agunot, women chained by the abandonment of their husbands. The other fifteen chapters are on topics as diverse as the life of sin, illness, the dead and transmigrations, apostasy, converts, ritual slaughterers, hidden zaddikim, and Elijah. Since Nigal likes these stories and trusts these stories, he relies on the later retellings and topical arrangements of S. Y. Zevin and S. A. Horodetsky without seeing any methodological problems.

On a negative note about the usually fine job done by Littman Library, Nigal’s volume is an exception. In a word-processing age, there was no excuse for having over twenty pages of additions to the original footnotes of the Hebrew edition as an appendix. They should have been cut and pasted into the correct location.

Both volumes are valuable contributions needed to make an assessment of Hasidic stories. Lewis considers the stories as literary creations and Nigal considers them authentic. Nigal accepts Buber’s category of the Hasidic story but leaves us with a more pious version, whereas Lewis completely shatters the category. Lewis directly takes issue with Nigal who rarefies out the stories from these books and does not mention that these collections also contained magic spells, personal letters, sermonic material, halakhah, and events in the community.

Jack Zipes, an important scholar of folklore cited by neither author, thought that tales reflect the conditions, ideas, tastes, and values of the societies in which they were created. They show the ideals and utopias to which they aspired and they “reveal the gaps between truth and falsehood in our immediate society.”[1] The stories of the holy ones, the Hasidic tales, are still an untapped gold mine for those seeking to understand Eastern European Jewish society and more so for their imagined utopias. To truly evaluate Hasidic stories, more books will need to be written on the subject.

Note

[1]. Jack Zipes, “The Changing Function of the Fairy Tale,” The Lion and the Unicorn 12, no. 2 (December 1988): 29.

Last spring a book came out about the history of boredom entitled BOREDOM: A Lively History by Peter Toohey. The reviews in the NYT and elsewhere mainly dealt with the coming to be of the word and its usages in earlier centuries as a form of melancholia, as ennui, or as repetition. But this week the NYT reported on an academic paper at a local conference on the topic of intellectual history that showed how the usage of the word spiked in the 1970’s and that the meaning meant something not interesting enough for one to do. Until the 1970’s no one said “how do we prevent our employees from getting bored?’ How do we prevent school kids from getting bored?” When you were in a situation of duty or requirement then one did what one was supposed to do.
The purpose of the NYT article and the academic lists on which I saw it was to cheer the return to intellectual history of contextualizing popular and influential books. The return to intellectual history was why it caught my eye but the discussion of boredom is more significant. My historian sources are also pointing out that historians are beginning to turn to the 1970’s and its culture.

I did my own google books search (as well as Ngram) and found that in its pedestrian usages it meant impatience, like boredom due to a delayed train. When it is used in Horton Hears a Who in mid-century, it means impatience with the speck. In philosophic literature it meant ennui. Our usage of it is a post-1950’s usage when authors like Erich Fromm brought European thought of ennui to mass America situational repetition. The word boredom was also used by sociologists of suburbia like Herbert Ganz. In the 1970’s it spikes in its usage. We start finding statements advocating not to be bored at work or not to be bored in ones marriage. And if you are, then leave them. The term boredom was part of a wave of bad popular-psych of the era that encouraged people never to be bored. If things are not going your way then life is too short to stay there. Work-psychologists, marriage therapists, and toy makers all started solving the problem of boredom. Boredom was seen as leading to drugs, cults, and divorce. By 2011, every preschooler knows how to whine “I’m bored.” In order to overcome boredom prior ages spoke of hard work, character, or the sin of acadia.

Now what about religion? Starting in the late 1970’s we find sermons on the problem of people bored in shul and in the 1980’s we find books. Before that we have discussions on the meaning of synagogue for modern man or how the yetzar hara makes you want to leave shul. Boredom is not an valid excuse or concern. The connection the word synagogue and boredom before 1980 included Jacob Neusner, Dennis Prager, reports of the AJC and Bnai Brith and Jospeh Heller of Catch-22 fame and the cult leader Osho. (Modechai Kaplan uses the word in the context of new music so it wont have sameness not it the context of participants). People did not think that you walked away from boredom, rather only from irrelevance.

By the early 1980’s we find a second tier discovering boredom in the synagogue, Sam Heilman, Reuven Bulka, and the Jewish magazines. I found one Orthodox rabbi in a suburban congregation adamant in claiming that the youth in his synagogue and day school are not bored. I attended the school for a year so I consider this an amusing find. In the late 1980’s and 1990’s, we have an entire literature of outreach and kiruv works showing their zeitgeist by addressing synagogue boredom through explaining the service or giving tips on greater involvement.

The mussar approach to overcome such feeling which they considered laziness was habituation and motivating one’s inner emotions either through sermon and song or hell-fire images. Ramchal starts with the need for alacrity and scrupulousness. Rav Soloveitchik uses the word in the Existential sense of ennui and Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel in his last book of 1966 speaks only of the boredom of old-age and the need for a higher purpose not senior-center activities. Lots of Polish Hasidism is translated as if the original spoke of boredom and not achieving greatness.

A quick search shows that only since about 2003 have books about congregational life written by upbeat clergy and not sociologists have considered the need to have a section on boredom. We now have religious pop-psych books by congregation professionals explaining this “perennial problem of the laity with boredom,” unaware of recent boredom is as a concern. These upbeat versions take boredom as a natural part of life, not something only with us for a few decades and with changing meaning. It is not worth it to discuss how these post-2003 versions (mis)use their sources. In the post-2003 versions we are no longer worried about defection or encouraging one to leave.

For an interesting example of how the concept changes, in the recent work The Men’s Section: Orthodox Jewish Men in an Egalitarian World by Elana Maryles Sztokman, she discusses how men are bored in synagogue, they are not really into prayer and they have spiritually bored lives seek refuge in cerebral pursuits of the the sermon, Torah study, and reading. This is part of the recent post-2003 trend to accept boredom as a issue to deal with on a regular basis. Men learning in shul is not explained as a habituation toward study or a lack of habituation in prayer. Nor is their a call for revival, either kiruv or renewal movement, as in the 1980’s. And unlike the 1980’s, the rabbi no longer get blamed for irrelevance.

There are probably lots of other applications to the religious literature of our age. Any other good examples or avenues of the effect of the concept of boredom on the religion of our age? How else has Judaism been constructed around boredom in the last 30 years that was not there beforehand?

There is a really nice article about the generational shift in American Buddhism. The younger generation is more DIY and catering to people’s needs. They also dont see a need to live a sever life in a monastery as part of their training. The gen-x backlashed against the baby-boomer’s spirituality. The older generation were an elite that sought Enlightenment, the younger generation create a wellness and solution for stress.The article is longer and has a nice video by three elders reluctantly acknowledging the change.

American Buddhism facing generational shift
By Rachel Zell, Associated Press, July 17, 2011

The meditation hall, also used as a meeting space, is where the luminaries of Buddhism in the West recently gathered to debate.
The issue they were facing had been percolating for years on blogs, in Buddhist magazines and on the sidelines of spiritual retreats. It often played out as a clash of elders versus young people, the preservers of spiritual depth versus the alleged purveyors of “Buddhism-lite.” Organizers of the gathering wanted the finger-pointing to end. The future of American Buddhism was at stake, they said.
So on a sweltering day at the Garrison Institute, a Buddhist retreat overlooking the Hudson River, the baby boomers who had popularized the tradition in the West met with younger leaders to tackle their differences.

“How can those of us who were pioneers in the ’60s and ’70s, support them without getting in their way and let them know that they have our blessings and support?” said Jack Kornfield, a prominent Buddhist teacher who helped introduce mindfulness, or insight, meditation to the U.S. four decades ago.

Buddhism in America is at a crossroads. The best-known Buddhist leaders, mostly white converts who emerged from the counterculture and protest movements of the Vietnam era, are nearing retirement or dying. Charlotte Joko Beck, a pioneer of Zen practice in America, passed away in June.

The next generation of teachers is pushing in new directions, shaped by the do-it-yourself ethos of the Internet age and a desire to make Buddhism more accessible. Informal study groups are in; organizing around a single teacher is out. Unsettled elders worry that the changes could go too far and lose touch with tradition.

“It seems to be one of the facts of life right now, not only in Buddhism, but in religion in general: it’s about mixing and matching,” said Zoketsu Norman Fischer, a longtime Zen priest, scholar and poet affiliated with the San Francisco Zen Center. “The freedom people feel that they have to experiment — how do you prevent that from becoming consumerist or completely superficial or dangerous?”
In Asia, monastics generally lead Buddhism in roles shaped partly by their monarchical societies; in the U.S., the teachers are mostly lay people. Beyond the Dalai Lama, Buddhism is best known in the United States not for any particular clergyman, ritual or liturgy, but through mindfulness-based stress reduction, which adapts strategies from vipassana, or insight medi tation.

Yet, a vein of conservatism runs through American Buddhist communities.

Many American Buddhist pioneers spent a decade or more studying with masters in Thailand, India, Burma and Nepal before returning home to take on students. On their websites, U.S. teachers post photos of themselves as young women in saris, or young men draped in robes, their heads cleanly shaven, on the steps of overseas monasteries. They are handing over leadership to the first convert Buddhist generation that was trained almost entirely in the West.

“The prior generation was modeled after the monastic model, where the old guy was the abbot,” said the Rev. Jay Rinsen Weik, a recently ordained Zen priest, who leads the Toledo Zen Center in Ohio with his wife, Karen, who is also a Zen priest. “The last generation suffered from not being able to distinguish the personality of the guy and his dharma (teachings).”

For younger Americans, spending several years cloistered abroad, absorbing the cultural traditions of another country, seems not only unnecessary but counterproductive for reaching Westerners. Spring Washam, 37, a founding teacher of the East Bay Meditation Center in Oakland, which has brought Buddhism to poorer, more diverse neighborhoods, said the attendees at her center want support, connection and friendship.

“These people want to be happy in their lives,” Washam said. “They’re not going to be monastics.”

One of the most startling developments for elders has been the formation of the Dharma Punx, who participated in the conference. The relatively new, popular movement mixes punk rock-inspired rebellion and Buddhism, seeing both as seeking freedom from suffering. Amid the grey hair and muted clothes of the attendees, the Dharma Punx stood out, with their tattoo-covered arms and T-shirts the color of traffic cones. The movement emerged from the work of Noah Levine, the son of American Buddhist author Stephen Levine. The younger Levine rediscovered Buddhism after a troubled youth; he and his colleagues have built a reputation for successfully bringing Buddhist practices into juvenile detention centers — a sign of the social activism that young Buddhists tie to their meditation practice.

“I’m all about adaptability,” said Vinny Ferraro, a Dharma Punx teacher, who said it would make no sense for him to “go off to a cave” and meditate for years.

“What attracts people is relevance,” he said. “Youth is suffering. These are prime suffering years, but I need it in my language.”
Whatever the elders think of these new approaches, they know they need the energy young innovators are bringing to the communities.
In the 1980s and early ’90s, few twenty- and thirty somethings took up Buddhism. Leaders attributed the problem to a 1980s’ backlash against spiritual seeking and society’s focus in that era on accumulating wealth. (One Western convert at the Garrison Institute, who became a Tibetan monk, said that when he wore his robes in North America in the 1980s, he was treated like “a nut case.”)

For some religion is a private affair or one done in devotion to textual study, but increasingly religious identity is connected to lobbying in Washington. I have mentioned many times that in a single row in synagogue – one can find one person interested in halkhic minutia in their life, another into Rav Nachman and a third interested in Lobbying in Washington.The three congregants have three different moral orders to their religion. This article is an indication that many of the significant clergy in our decade are into lobbying and politicking. I see many Roshei Yeshiva comfortable in this role as well as many pulpit rabbis – their commitment shares much with Archbishop Dolan’s political lobbying.

Religion-related lobby groups thrive in Washington, grew 5 times in 40 years
The number of religion-related lobbying groups in Washington has grown five-fold in the past 40 years, with their spending reaching almost $400 million annually, the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life latest study showed. It identified 212 groups, up from 158 a decade ago and 40 in 1970.
Their collective budgets for lobbing efforts in Washington were estimated at $390 million a year. For 131 of the groups for which data could be obtained, median spending was $890,000 in 2009, down from $970,000 the year before.
Forty groups accounted for the bulk of the spending, led by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which spent nearly $88 million in 2008, the last year for which data was provided.
Also in 2008, the Family Research Council spent $14 million and the American Jewish Committee $13 million.
In 2009, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops spent $27 million, Concerned Women for America $13 million, Bread for the World $11 million, the National Right to Life Committee $11 million and the Home School Legal Defense Association $11 million.
Issues the various groups lobbied on included support of Israel, church-state issues, and religious rights.
The Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life said in the report on Monday that other topics were bioethics, abortion, capital punishment, and end-of-life and family-marriage issues. Many of the groups also addressed international issues such as poverty.

The Princetonian had two interesting articles this week. One an interview with Prof. Martha Himmelfarb and tha nnouncement of the Rhodes scholarchip to Miriam Rosenbaum

The following is the third installment of “Keeping Faith,” a six-part series of conversations between politics professor Robert George and University professors of various faiths.