The Book of Doctrines and Opinions:

The Sister Rose Thering Fund COLLOQUIUM

MUSLIMS BEAR WITNESS TO THE HOLOCAUST:
A JOURNEY TO MUTUAL AFFIRMATION
Sunday, November 14, 2010
2 p.m

Sunday, November 14, 2010, 2 p.m.
Jubilee Hall Auditorium
Seton Hall University
400 South Orange Avenue
South Orange, NJ 07079

Panelists
Rabbi Jack Bemporad
Executive Director
Center for Interreligious Understanding

Imam Abdullah Antepli
Chaplain
Duke University

Professor Marshall Breger
Professor of Law
Catholic University School of Law

This past August, Professor Marshall Breger organized an unprecedented mission to the death camps at Dachau and Auschwitz led by Rabbi Jack Bemporad for eight influential Imams. The reactions were life-changing.

At the end of the service, prayer leader Muzammil Siddiqi, imam of the Islamic Society of Orange County, California, offered up an additional prayer: “We pray to God that this will not happen to the Jewish people or to any people anymore.”

Siddiqi was one of eight American Muslim leaders on a study tour to Dachau and Auschwitz that was co-sponsored by a German think tank and the Center for Interreligious Understanding, a New Jersey-based interfaith dialogue group. The delegation’s sole female member was Laila Muhammad, daughter of the late American Muslim leader W.D. Muhammad and granddaughter of Elijah Muhammad, the late leader of the Nation of Islam.

The unusual trip was the brainchild of Marshall Breger, an Orthodox Jew and a Republican who served as a senior official in the administrations of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. Breger, who wore his yarmulke on every leg of the trip, said he first had the idea of organizing the expedition last year, while he was in Israel during the visit of Pope Benedict XVI. He described it simply as a kind of eureka moment.

“There is a view that there is growing anti-Semitism in the Muslim world, reinforced by people like President [Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad, that there is growing Holocaust denial in the Muslim world,” explained Breger, now a law professor at Catholic University. “In light of that, the idea was to offer education to those who might not have the kind of knowledge that we’ve had about World War II and the Jewish community, and to do this in a public way.”

It is impossible to know what the long-term impact of such a trip will be. But if the heartfelt comments of the trip participants — including some with a history of previous statements that many Jews view as problematic — are any guide, Breger did not underestimate the value of direct experience in promoting education, understanding and even, perhaps, change.

Indeed, it was not hard to imagine that some of the Muslim delegates might be viewed as imperfect candidates for dialogue by Jews wary of discussions with those they see as Islamists or as prone to extremist views.

Emerging from the crematorium at Auschwitz-Birkenau, the delegates signed a memorial book. One of the inscriptions, from Sayyid M. Syeed, an interfaith activist, read, “For Muslims to see the Holocaust is an overwhelming experience.” It went on to quote a verse in the Quran stating that though man was created by God in excellent form, he is capable of becoming the lowest of the low.

In some of their most sensitive discussions, several delegates grappled with the issue of how to present the truth of the Holocaust in a way that would be accepted and taken to heart by their congregants.

Full Article in the Forward- here

Statement of Muslim American Imams and Community Leaders on Holocaust Denial

‘O you who believe, stand up firmly for justice as witnesses to Almighty God.” (Holy Qu’ran, al-Nisa “The Women” 4:135)

On August 7-11, 2010, we the undersigned Muslim American faith and community leaders visited Dachau and Auschwitz concentration camps where we witnessed firsthand the historical injustice of the Holocaust.

We met survivors who, several decades later, vividly and bravely shared their horrific experience of discrimination, suffering, and loss. We saw the many chilling places where men, women and children were systematically and brutally murdered by the millions because of their faith, race, disability and political affiliation.

In Islam, the destruction of one innocent life is like the destruction of the whole of humanity and the saving of one life is like the saving of the whole of humanity (Holy Qu’ran, al-Ma’idah “the Tablespread” 5:32). While entire communities perished by the many millions, we know that righteous Muslims from Bosnia, Turkey, Tunisia, Morocco, and Albania saved many Jews from brutal repression, torture and senseless destruction.

We bear witness to the absolute horror and tragedy of the Holocaust where over twelve million human souls perished, including six million Jews.

We condemn any attempts to deny this historical reality and declare such denials or any justification of this tragedy as against the Islamic code of ethics.

We condemn anti-Semitism in any form. No creation of Almighty God should face discrimination based on his or her faith or religious conviction.

We stand united as Muslim American faith and community leaders and recognize that we have a shared responsibility to continue to work together with leaders of all faiths and their communities to fight the dehumanization of all peoples based on their religion, race or ethnicity. With the disturbing rise of anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, and other forms of hatred, rhetoric and bigotry, now more than ever, people of faith must stand together for truth.

Together, we pledge to make real the commitment of “never again” and to stand united against injustice wherever it may be found in the world today.

Signatures of Imams Here

Sometime this week, the original post on half-shabbos and the squeal on “half- shabbos again” became my all-time most read post. Why?
It is not novel. People already know about these things. Was it just the web effect of going viral? Is it the sensationalism of peering behind a door? Were educators and rabbis really unaware? Was it the name “half-shabbos”? Was it just because it talked about the community and not ideas?

My runner-up biggest posts are on Rav Kook, Rav Amital, Kugel, Green, Riskin, Sacks, and post-orthodoxy —each of these posts had content not found elsewhere. Therefore, I understand why they received many readers. The Riskin post was my third biggest post without any links or discussions on other sites and without going viral, just because I was the only one who covered the topic.
But half-shabbos?? An overheard fragment. Really! Thoughts on why?

There is a Jewish or Orthodox parallel somewhere. It sounds familial. There is something to take note of here. But the similar Jewish debates do not immediately spring to mind.

Bishops Play Defense On Anti-Poverty Initiative

(RNS) For four decades, the U.S. Catholic bishops have maintained a nationwide program designed to help the poor lift themselves out of poverty. And for just as long, fierce critics have tried to kill it.

Proponents of the Catholic Campaign on Human Development (CCHD) say it exemplifies Jesus’ preference for the poor and downtrodden; opponents, including several bishops, say it funds left-wing activists, some of whom undermine church doctrine on homosexuality and abortion.

As the U.S. bishops’ flagship anti-poverty program, the CCHD is funded through a special collection taken up each year on the Sunday before Thanksgiving. Since 1970, the program has disbursed $290 million in grants, according to CCHD officials.

But the program’s practices and guiding philosophy have been sharply attacked by conservatives armed with Internet-enhanced research, a sharp nose for malfeasance, and a deep apprehension for anything that sniffs of socialism.

Someone told me a story of how they were at a wedding last year, and that during the course of dinner the head of a major Modern Orthodox institution told a Rosh Yeshiva that he does not smile enough. One should always be smiling. I have nothing against smiling, I do it often myself. But there was something interesting in this post on another blog that made me think of that wedding story. Here are selections from the other blog’s 12 points. It reminds me how hard it is to speak of Navardok today.

2. In the Protestant West today, smiling has become a moral imperative. The smile is regarded as the objective externalization of a well ordered life. Sadness is moral failure.

3. The motif of late-capitalist society is the stylization of happiness, the cultivation of lifestyles from which every trace of sadness has been expunged. Peter Berger identified ‘the Protestant smile’ as part of Protestantism’s cultural heritage in the West. In a Catholic country like France, it is still considered crass to smile too often, or at strangers. Evangelical churchliness is the re-utilization of bare-toothed crassness. Our cultural obsession with health, happiness, and positive thinking is a secularization of the evangelical church service.

4. The cultural triumph of the smile leaves behind a trail of casualties. Where evangelical churches theologize happiness and ritualized the smile, sad believers are spiritually ostracized. Sadness is the scarlet letter of the contemporary church, embroidered proof of a person’s spiritual failure.

5. When the church’s theological rejection of sadness was secularized, sadness became a pathology requiring medical intervention. The medicalization of sadness is the final cultural triumph of the Protestant smile. If Luther or Kierkegaard or Dostoevsky had lived today, we would have given them Prozac and schooled them in positive thinking. They would have grinned abortively – and written nothing. The truth of sadness is the womb of thought.
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8. I know a fellow who was interviewed for ordination in an American denomination. Asked to describe his hope for the church’s future, his eyes filled with tears and he admitted, ‘I don’t know if I have any hope for the church.’ Perplexed by this response, his ecclesiastical interviewers furrowed their brows, scribbled little notes and question-marks, conferred gravely about his fitness for ministry – though they ought to have asked for his prayers, or poured oil on his head, or sat at his feet and made him their bishop.

9. Where sadness is expunged from a culture, the cry for justice falls silent. Johnny Cash carried darkness on his back, refusing to wear bright clothes as long as the world is unredeemed. Why do we dress our priests in black? Are they not in perpetual mourning for a world that is passing away? Is not Christian joy carried out in the shadow of this sadness? In a culture of happiness, it is all the more necessary that our priests continue to dress in black, refusing the cheap comfort of bright vestments and the empty promise of the rainbow.

10. At the turn of the millennium, J. G. Ballard wondered how the next generation would perceive the 20th century: ‘My grandchildren are all under the age of four, the first generation who will have no memories of the present century, and are likely to be appalled when they learn what was allowed to take place. For them, our debased entertainment culture and package-tour hedonism will be inextricably linked to Auschwitz and Hiroshima, though we would never make the connection.’ How do we explain the fact that Auschwitz and Hiroshima are immediately succeeded by the cult of happiness and the triumph of the smile? How can it be that the worst century was also the happiest? Our children will interpret our happiness as blindness and self-forgetfulness. We have drugged ourselves against history; sadness is truthful memory.

12. The Bible promises the end of history and the end of sadness…This can be understood as eschatological promise only on the presumption that history is catastrophe, a vale of tears. Sadness is overcome through cosmic redemption. A culture without sadness is a culture without hope. The cure for sadness is God.

Full version here at Faith and Theology.

I once had a student attempt a cultural analysis of Bat Ayin. Here we have a sociological article on the topic. Her example of dredlock peyot in a good catch,but I wish there the article had a thicker description, in the Geertz sense.

Joanna Steinhardt, American Neo-Hasids in the Land of Israel Nova Religio: The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions, Volume 13, Issue 4, (2010) pages 22–42,

Some wore a blend of Eastern-style clothes, such as Thai fisherman pants, open-collared Indian shirts and embroidered vests; others wore baggy pants and T-shirts like any other American youth. The women wore long flowing skirts and dresses, multilayered over loose pants, with colorful tunics, scarves and shawls. The young Americans were demonstrative in their piety, uninhibited and enthusiastic in their adherence to Jewish law, and youthful and informal in their behavior.

American Neo- Hasidism in Israel, as practiced at Chesed V’Emet and Shirat HaTorah, is a syncretistic revival of traditional Judaism that uses American countercultural expressions to give meaning to Jewish practice and identity.

A new 75 page article on miracles in Gersonides. Very well done, working out all the naturalistic details.

Gersonides’ Use of Aristotle’s Meteorology in his Accounts of some Biblical Miracles Sara Klein-Braslavy
Aleph: Historical Studies in Science and Judaism Jul 2010, Vol. 10, No. 2: 240–313.

Abstract (Summary)

5. In his explanation of miraculous phenomena, Gersonides employs the terminology used by the Meteorology to describe natural phenomena in order to explain the natural causes created by God in order to effect the miracles. Here he does not explicitly cite the Meteorology to explain the miracle but uses its terminology to show that he understood these things in accordance with the ideas expounded there, and that his readers should do likewise: certain elements of the flood and perhaps also of the splitting of the sea.

Earlier this week, I received a comment from a Rabbi Yisroel, whom I never met, with a website link to his site Jewish Paths. When I went to his website, I found a list of affirmations that seemed to come directly out of early 1990’s New Age. We each have a uniqueness and personal connection. We have to respect ourselves and heal ourselves. God loves us. Religion is concerned with the cessation of universal suffering along with a oneness of mankind and all life. Here is an ostensibly Neo-Haredi person entirely enmeshed in the new age. There are many many Orthodox teachers out there offering similar spirituality. While Green-Landes is the official public debate and that many think there is an official Orthodox theology, in reality there are many forms of local theology and local knowledge.
Check out the wiki New Age. Here are similar versions from a non-Jewish School of Metaphysics and A Spiritual Counseling Center and Jewish Lights -Kerry Olitzky’s Jewish Paths Toward Healing and Wholeness.
Looking over the list, it seems to owe not a small bit to Rabbi David Aaron’s new age religion.

Jewish Paths
Connect with your Soul

Statement of Beliefs
* We believe that every person must find their personal connection with life.
* We believe that happiness and an optimistic outlook are essential in
attaining positive growth and fulfillment.
* We believe that everyone can find the voice of their soul which will help
guide them through their journey.
* We believe that each of us has our uniqueness that defines our mission in life
and our unique contribution to the world.
* We believe that everyone has a responsibility to identify their personal
weaknesses and work truthfully and diligently to overcome them.
* We believe that Tikun HaOlam (repairing the world) is predicated upon
Tikun HaNefesh (repairing oneself).
* We believe that we have an individual and collective responsibility to create
a world free of hunger, suffering and political and religious oppression.
* We believe that we are here to respect ourselves, one another and the fragile
environment.
* The G*d that you do not believe in, we do not believe in either.
* We believe that G*d is loving, kind and patient.
* We believe in the Oneness of G*d, the Universe, Life and Mankind.

On first glance, the spiritual emphasis is on healing, the emotions, and getting in touch with oneself. This is not to be confused with our Evangelical Orthodox rabbis. Using the Albans Institute criteria, this is a spirituality of emotions. If you want to contrast it with other spirituality types, Aish Hatorah (usually) and the Kabbalah Centre is about understanding the deep intellectual connections between things, the rules of reality. 12 Step, Chabad and the Purpose Driven Life are action centered.

I want to return to the issue in the comments from a few weeks ago. The question of Yoga. Are religious warnings crazy and fundamentalist? I actually liked Albert Mohler’s Evangelical critique of Yoga.

Before I start, a few details.

The Hatha Yoga of back bends and head stands taught by Richard Hittleman and Lilas in the 1970’s was entirely physical education. Anyone who practices those- do not even know that there is more. In the 1990’s, Yoga was combined with Buddhist insight meditation and new age. Now, much of the original Hinduism is returning for some, a small number. Some are practicing gym class Yoga and others, a much smaller number, are chanting to the monkey God or invoking Hindu deities. Not all of the latter is permitted according to Judaism. I do not think that is very reactionary position. The question is where are the lines? There are responsa permitting yoga and meditation as a physical activity with caveats not to bow, offer flowers, or worship. But what of asanas that have a reference back to a Vedic deity? What of the Sun salutation, where the sun in our culture has none of the original Helios worship references?

Now, that Hindus are moving to America, they are complaining that Americans, especially Jews, are robbing their religion by not acknowledging that Yoga was Hindu. In their practice, the asanas are connected to their worship. There are Jews claiming to do Jewish Yoga- either giving Jewish context, or coming up with Hebrew letter positions, or just delusional claiming it was the teachings of the prophets.

Stefanie Syman published The Subtle Body: The Story of Yoga in America (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2010) showing that American Yoga has been sanitized, de-religioned, marketed, and made Yoga a fluffy cure all. She noted that there was protest by Evangelicals against the Hindu practice of Yoga in the Nineteenth century. She notes that Transcendentalism and the counterculture helped make Yoga acceptable. The book was reviewed by the NYT.

In turn, Albert Mohler reviewed the book pointing out the idolatrous nature of Yoga and many who practice the gym version wrote in to complain.

“The Subtle Body — Should Christians Practice Yoga?” Monday, September 20, 2010

No one tells the story of yoga in America better than Stefanie Syman, whose recent book, The Subtle Body: The Story of Yoga in America, is a masterpiece of cultural history….Her book actually opens with a scene from this year’s annual White House Easter Egg Roll. President Barack Obama made a few comments and then introduced First Lady Michelle Obama, who said: “Our goal today is just to have fun. We want to focus on activity, healthy eating. We’ve got yoga, we’ve got dancing, we’ve got storytelling, we’ve got Easter-egg decorating.”

Syman describes the yoga on the White House lawn as “sanitized, sanctioned, and family-friendly,” and she noted the rather amazing fact that a practice once seen as so exotic and even dangerous was now included as an activity sufficiently safe and mainstream for children.

She also explains that yoga “is one of the first and most successful products of globalization, and it has augured a truly post-Christian, spiritually polyglot country.”
Christians are not called to empty the mind or to see the human body as a means of connecting to and coming to know the divine. Believers are called to meditate upon the Word of God — an external Word that comes to us by divine revelation — not to meditate by means of incomprehensible syllables.

Jews are also not called to reach Samadhi or to attain a cessations of thoughts. Jewish requires action and to listen to God’s word. But that does not mean it is forbidden.

Most seem unaware that yoga cannot be neatly separated into physical and spiritual dimensions. The physical is the spiritual in yoga, and the exercises and disciplines of yoga are meant to connect with the divine…”. “All forms of yoga involve occult assumptions,” he warns, “even hatha yoga, which is often presented as a merely physical discipline.”

This is where we differ. Side bends or the “Cobra” do not have spiritual dimensions as practiced in the gym. Not all of it is occult. The bigger question are practices like the Sun Salutation. Is that addressing the Sun as deity or only as positive force, the way we refer to Mr Sunshine in children songs? We dont follow people who find occult origins on wikipedia, our criteria is the current meaning. If the original meaning is forgotten, then it is forgotten.

Consider this — if you have to meditate intensely in order to achieve or to maintain a physical posture, it is no longer merely a physical posture.

For use, everything not physical – mental, meditative, or therapeutic is not automatically an alternate religion. Just because something it uses inner forces, does not make it forbidden.

As a response Philip Goldberg, Interfaith minister; author of the forthcoming book ‘American Veda’ assumed that the Evangelicals are worried about conversion. No, they are worried about idolatry.

I can’t help thinking: What are they afraid of? Are they that insecure? Do they think so little of their flock as to fear that they’ll convert to Hinduism because they chant some Sanskrit mantras, or say “Namaste” instead of goodnight, or hear some tidbits of Vedic philosophy while stretching?

Based on my research for my book, American Veda, the Christians and Jews who have leaped body and soul into Hinduism or Buddhism were not seduced away from their ancestral religions; they were already out the door and searching for alternatives…. In fact, the current revival of Christian and Jewish mystical practices was triggered by the popularity of Eastern meditation forms in the 1970s.

This should comfort most Christians, although it might alarm fundamentalists all the more. The truth is, Christians who believe that theirs is the one true religion, that Jesus is the one and only savior of all humankind and that the Bible is to be taken literally as God’s only revealed word, will always feel threatened by a spiritual tradition that recognizes many pathways to the divine and many ways to engage in any particular religion.

Another response by Josh Schrei who argues for the pop American version. He shows how far our Yoga is from the original, so much so that Mohler should calm now. I think the factors necessary for a Jewish response lies somewhere in Schrei’s presentation.

Historically, yoga is a rigorous process of self-transformation that requires continual practice over decades and decades. In one of the many branches of Tibetan Buddhist yoga historically practiced by the yogins of Ladakh, there were three pre-requisites for initiate yogis to begin on the path: 1) You must be willing to spend many years alone in a cave. 2) You must be willing to spend many years alone in a cave and probably die there. 3) You must be willing to spend many years alone in a cave, probably die there, and have no one remember your name. This certainly is not the feel-good yoga practiced at countless studios and gyms around America. It is an extreme example but it highlights a key point. Yoga as historical practice had a severe starting point, and was certainly not designed to make practitioners feel better about themselves. In fact it was quite often extremely uncomfortable.

In historic yoga, the individual with a capital I, as we in the West often view ourselves, is nowhere in the picture… Which means that yoga, at its core has absolutely nothing to do with individual feelings of fabulousness, or well being, or individual happiness, or satisfaction.
So is modern yoga “dangerous?” Of course not. Certainly Mohler and his cohorts — and orthodox Hindus for that matter — have nothing to fear from the modern yogis who practice only asana and chant a few words of Sanskrit they don’t understand.

I am still looking to find the good post by Rabbi Tzvi Freeman on Yoga that he took down when the ignorant began to attack him.

From GetRelgion on the controversy:

I’m always surprised at how many people don’t know the relationship of yoga to Hinduism…I subscribe to the Hindu American Foundation news and this is a common theme. They really want non-Hindus to understand that yoga is a Hindu practice. They send out quotes, announcements about temple openings — complete with an explanation of and workshops for yoga and its philosophy — and snippets of stories where Hindus are defending the practice of yoga.

I think the topic of whether the exercises can be secularized and adopted by non-Hindus is tremendously important and fascinating. But I was still shocked that no Hindus were quoted in the piece. Many would say that removing the religious aspect from the exercise makes it something completely different — something like rigorous stretching exercises.

When I posted the Half-Shabbos post, my point was solely to show a generation gap and a technology gap.

My point was correctly understood in a recent tweet linking to my blog.
Rabbi Efrem Goldberg said: Asking kids not to text on shabbos may be like taking a taanis dibbur

The tweet was followed by another a tweet that the average adolescent sends almost 3400 text messages a month. (Since I don’t use Twitter, I don’t know how to find the original follow-up tweet.) Adolescents are identifying themselves with text messaging. Self-definition through FB and texting is stronger than traditional patterns. I had noticed the phenomena in a broad range of Orthodoxy, not limited to any one segment.

What is interesting is the diverse range of reactions to the post, none of which was my intention. People emailed me and spoke to me during Sukkot with their theories.

What does half-shabbos show?

1] It shows how repressed they are. They don’t want to be frum and when in private they violate shabbos. They want the change to break it.
2] It shows how comfortable they are. They want to be frum but are comfortable to observe it on their own terms. And it shows a community comfortable enough to accept them.
3] They are the failures of modern Orthodoxy or they are the failures of Orthodoxy-lite. They show how kids are going bad.
4] They need shabbatons to help make them frum. We need to help make shabbos meaningful. This is probably the tip of an iceberg of many other non-frum activities and they need to find shabbos meaningful. Only ruah can help.

From the simple quirk of our era of a practice called “half-shabbos,” I am not sure there is enough evidence for any of these.

As a side note- many of the discussion are confusing several separate and unrelated phenomena.

Laity will always bend rules. A major desideratum is a history of the laity within Judaism. The responsa literature show many communities that had to deal adolescent transgressions including with mixed dancing, bunding, swimming on shabbos, brothel use, not wearing tefillin, and theft. And adults who violate Shabbat, create problematic slaughter houses, drink regular wine, and have affairs. In all of these cases they remain in the community, and it is acknowledged that they are deviants within the social norm.

This is not to be confused with leaving the community. We are witnessing the start of a new cycle of retreat from religion in which people are leaving Orthodoxy.

There is a further confusion of those leaving with liberal positions. Those who are leaving are not those keeping half-shabbos nor are the ones leaving on the left wing side of orthodoxy. Do not think of it as a spectrum in which one keeps moving to the left and then one falls off a cliff into non-observance. Those fleeing will come from all parts of the community. Kids in KGH, Passaic,or Brooklyn turn 16 or 17 and then decide this is not for them and them just stop keeping kosher and stop keeping shabbos. Then they move away. They don’t care about anything liberal in thought or practice. Others wake up in their 20’s and say this is not for them. Others will leave after a divorce. When the US reached a peak of divorce and dissolution in 1969-1972, it was the marriages of conservative and early-married 1958-1962 that were breaking up. Now, it is the gen x who married young and were all frum that is getting divorced and many are not returning. (One of the local rabbis devoted his Rosh Hashanah sermon to this epidemic). They were not liberal, just waking up to life’s options at 30.

Many jumped to assume that Half-Shabbos was automatically in category two of leaving Orthodoxy and not category one of transgressions of the laity.

Some activates are deviant and other activities write one out of the community. In interwar Poland, playing cards on shabbos, brothel use, and eating in a restaurant that served meat and milk was deviant. Eating ham meant one was outside the community. In Western Europe, carrying on Shabbat, going to the symphony on shabbos, treating all dairy as kosher and even eating shellfish may have been seen by some of the laity as only deviant. The criteria is not based on halakhah but folk categories. As Rav Aharon Lichtenstein noted 25 years ago when religious Zionist kids did not worry about teudot on fruit “terumah is a greater prohibition than traifah, but people do not treat it that way. ”

In America, the cycle of religion reverses every 30-35 years since the 1730’s. We are now at the start of another downward turn. Jews are now on an American cycle.

In Eastern Europe most Jews gave up observance after 1881. It was 90% in new lands like Odessa, 70-80% in most other place. The yeshiva and Chassidic systems were seen as rotten to the core. Moving to the cities, not America, was considered as detrimental to faith. However, the cities provided new religious organization This was followed by new inter-bellum loss of faith. The Jewish cycle was similar to many of the European peasants who gave up religion as they because 20th century citizens.

But separate than this is the fact that the laity, especially adolescents, will always have transgressions. There were lay transgressions in 1995, but the triumphalist rhetoric assumed that a greater commitment to a totalizing halakhic ideal and practice was around the corner.

There was an equally divergent spectrum of how to “solve” half shabbos. But since they are in the fold already, you cannot convert them to Orthodoxy. Some of these issues relate to my post from Saturday night on “Christian Rock and Kiruv,” which did not get discussed and relates to these issues. If i dont get discussion of the Christian Rock post, then I will repost it.

When the new issue of Jewish Review of Book came out, a friend emailed me the Landes review of Green and asked: Is this frum screed any different than the worst of the dogmatic pronouncements from YU polemicists?

Here is the article by Landes. Last Trumpet at Jewschool has published a response by Green.

To the editor:

Rabbi Daniel Landes’ da’ mah she-tashiv (“Know what to answer the heretic”) approach to my Radical Judaism, protecting innocents from “the dangers lurking in the rhetoric that Green and like-minded thinkers employ,” represents a theological bankruptcy lurking in traditional Jewish circles. The forces of religion fought two great battles in the twentieth century, one against evolution and the other, taken more seriously by Jews, against Biblical criticism. It lost them both, quite decisively. These defeats, plus the Holocaust, are real parts of the baggage that any intellectually honest Jewish theology must confront. My book is an attempt to create a viable Judaism in the face of those realities. Landes may choose to live in a closed circle that pretends these uncomfortable facts do not exist, continuing to play by the old theological rules. For Jews living outside those circles, such an approach does not work. He should know; many of his students are among them.

Who is the “God of Israel” Landes is so proud to champion? The God of Numbers 31, telling Moses to slaughter the Midianites? The “compassionate Father” of our rabbinic prayers? Would Landes accept the God of Maimonides’ Guide as “the God of Israel?” Or the God of the Zohar? The longest single chapter of my book is precisely about the evolution of our understanding of God, a process that has never ended. Landes passes over the obvious evolution and variety of Jewish views of God as though they did not exist. But a freezing of theological thought in the face of contemporary challenges is precisely what we do not need. It is just as threatening to living Judaism as is the freezing of halakhah.

Indeed Mordecai Kaplan understood that much of Judaism’s vigor lay in its ability to grow and evolve. But so did Rav Kook, whose theological writing has always attracted me more than Kaplan’s. I am amused that Landes finds Kaplan to be my “hidden master” at this late point in my career. Where was he when I could have used him to shore up my Kaplanian credentials? While Kaplan’s style may at times be trying, to dismiss his theology as simply “boring” is beneath the dignity of response. Kaplan at least tells you openly and honestly what he means by “God.” I respect this and try to do the same. In some areas the divergence between us may be more in affect than in substance. But in matters of the heart that makes all the difference.

The nasty attack on Jewish Renewal is also unworthy of Landes. He picks out my comment on the seventh commandment (I say clearly that I am reading the ten as a guide for teachers) to remind his readers of the sexual misdeeds of some leaders in that movement. I suggest he beware of calling the kettle black. I have not seen that the high fences of halakhah have been terribly successful of late at helping some Orthodox teachers to defeat temptation, either sexual or financial.

The high point of my annoyance is Landes’ claim that I offer “no doctrine of ahavat Yisrael.” This book is written entirely in the spirit of love for both Judaism and Jews. Why else would I make the effort? Landes is unhappy that I admit openly my deep alienation from “the narrowly and triumphally religious” within our community. Honesty can sting. My claim to be “a religious Jew but a secular Zionist” is also intentionally distorted for polemical purposes. I meant simply that I remain committed to the vision of a Jewish and democratic state (There – I have signed my loyalty oath!) while according it no messianic significance. Has that gotten too hard to understand?

Landes lines up with the late Sam Dresner and others in expressing an overweaning fear of anything that smacks of pantheism, celebrating God within nature, or an underlying sense of universal religiosity. But it is precisely this sort of religion that I believe humanity most urgently needs in this century, when our collective survival as a species is so threatened. I am here to teach a Jewish version of it, one relying deeply on our own sources and bearing our values, but without making an exclusive truth claim for Judaism. I rejoice that the deepest religious truths are known to men and women of many cultures, clothed in the garments of both east and west. See Malachai 1:11.

Mostly I am saddened and disappointed that Landes reads me this way. He is, after all, the director of Pardes Institute. Surely that worthy institution was so-named by its founders for the association of “pardes” with the multiple ways in which Jewish sources can be read and interpreted. It has claimed for decades to champion intellectual pluralism under the cloak of behavioral conformity. Heresy hunting does not befit its leader.

Arthur Green

In the 1960’s, Tom Lehrer made fun of National Brotherhood Week, the national week from the 1940’s to the 1960’s that affirmed the unity of mankind.

Oh, the Protestants hate the Catholics
And the Catholics hate the Protestants
And the Hindus hate the Moslems
And everybody hates the Jews

But during National Brotherhood Week
National Brotherhood Week
It’s National Everyone-Smile-At-
One-Another-hood Week

This week I received the universalism pitch three times. First from the Chief Rabbinate office, then from Chancellor Arnold Eisen, and finally at the Council of Centers of Jewish-Christian Relations conference. Despite all the mockery, National Brotherhood Week allowed Jews and Catholics to enter white Protestant America. Now, there is a perceived need to stop the demonization of the other. In all three cases the appeal was not to theology or specific commonalities, rather the universalism in which we are all brothers of a common Father in Heaven.

The first text I received was by Oded Wiener is the Director General and coordinates interfaith dialogue for the Chief Rabbinate of Israel. (He also writes Metzger’s successful speeches.) We need to emphasize that all humans are in the image of God and that we need interpersonal dialogue to end violence. Hmm.. seems to be responding to many major rabbis in Israel who have been racist and denying human dignity to non-Jews.

A world without violence: religions and cultures in dialogue
by Oded Wiener 14 October 2010

Beyond the quest for a better world, one without violence, there is a common element that unites us all – the belief in one G-d. It is important to understand that man, who was created in the image of G-d, is not a wild, independent creation, who cannot be subjected to restrictions or criticism. This is certainly not the case. Man is continuously accountable – first and foremost to the Creator, who watches his actions and both demands and expects that he will act appropriately in all areas of life.

What is the significance of man being created in “G-d’s image”? The meaning is that in every man one can see a semblance of the Creator… And for the sake of peace among men, that one should not say to his fellow, “My father is greater than yours”.. . Again, the greatness of the Holy One, blessed be He, manifests itself in the fact that man stamps out many coins with one seal, and they are all alike, but the King, the King of kings, the Holy One, blessed be He, stamped each man with the seal of Adam, and not one of them is like his fellow.”… These words are of great importance and reflect man’s commitment to behave in a way which respects the image and spirit of G-d within him, and the image and spirit of G-d in his fellow man– regardless of his religion or views, nationality or his people of origin.

The use of violence and force by a person of faith is in clear contradiction to the ways of G-d and undermines the ideological basis in the name of which that person is exercising violence.

Dialogue is the torch that must be carried in pride, without fear. It is no secret that on each side there is an opposition that challenges dialogue between religious and spiritual leaders and which, in extreme cases, is coupled with threats or efforts to condemn and marginalize those who engage in it… For this exact reason religious leaders ought to ask themselves – in light of the ignorance regarding the traditions and religion of other nations, which is often the catalyst for violence – how can they encourage dialogue, educate, teach, influence, and bring people closer together?

Full Version Here.

The second received speech was by Chancellor Eisen. He seems to have given several variants of it in the last few weeks. He gave it in the mid-west as “A Jewish Theology of Pluralism.” In that version he opened with the sharp statement the energy for dialogue and interaction between faiths is usually promoted by a crisis, a necessity, or an urgency. The purpose of such a theology is not to achieve sameness. And an effective theology of religious pluralism must not start with Moses or Abraham. It must start with Adam, the ancestry of all humans. Eisen’s NY version sought commonality with Islam through the common shared Abraham covenant of circumcision.

Arnold Eisen Chancellor, The Jewish Theological Seminary, October 24, 2010
The moderates of all faiths have to talk often and well, lest the extremists carry the day. The stakes of not doing so are simply too high to countenance.
But there is another, no less important, imperative to dialogue. It stems from the texts and practices that believers like me hold sacred and a notion of covenant with God and community that sees these bonds as precious vehicles to the service of something larger and higher than ourselves.
Jewish Sages have always made much of the fact that the Torah begins with Adam and Eve, not with Abraham or Moses. After the Flood, humanity begins again with Noah and his children, only one of whom is the ancestor of Israel. Why? So that no one can claim purer blood than anyone else; so that all of us know that we all, without exception, are created in God’s image and act on that knowledge. God makes a covenant with all “children of Noah” 10 generations before the covenant with Abraham.
The Torah is clearly interested in both of the sons of Abraham and wants its readers to be concerned with them as well… Abraham then inscribes the mark of the covenant on himself and his firstborn son, Ishmael, who is thirteen at the time. Isaac is not yet born. The result of the story, and its variant in the Quran, is that Jews share the sign of the covenant from the very outset with another people, another faith.
Full Version Here.

The third time was at the CCJR conference, in which theologian Prof Terrence Tilley, Avery Cardinal Dulles, S.J., Professor of Catholic Theology, dealt with the contradiction between the recognition by the Catholic Church of Judaism as a revelation and their own sense of the specialness of the Church. He answer to the tension is not to solve it theologically but to dissolve it logically and practically.

Tilley cited the pluralism of Sacks in which the universalism of Adam plays itself out in particularity. Tilley said focus on the universalism since according to Sacks, after Babel we have no ability to evaluate others anymore. Even the [Adamite] Noahide laws can only be know in, and through, the particularity of other faiths. We have no God’s eye perspective to judge others in their particularity. Hence, if it is possible according to epistemological pluralists like Sacks that we have to work on the universal level and cannot enter truth claims, then the contradiction is not a contradiction.

Hilary Putnam has a similar reading of Sacks in an obscure volume. But Putnam frames it according his thinking that we have [universal] value without [particular] fact. Hilary Putnam, “Monotheism and Humanism.” Humanity before God, ed. William Schweiker, Michael A. Johnson, and Kevin Jung (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2006), 19-30.

In these three cases, they all turned to Adam as a commonality. They seem less theological and more practical. When you have two groups that are in conflict, the practical first step is to seek a universal in order to create a safe space and establish at least some commonality. If human brotherhood seemed silly in the 1960’s – but it served us well. Can these simple statements serve us equally as well? Has there been so much demonizing with patronizing tolerance that we need a core sense of humanity?

This past Shabbat, Rav Aharon Lichtenstein held a question and answer session in Teaneck. The questions were indicative of where the community is at right now, while the answers led the older members of the audience to sense their own mortality.

The four questions asked were:
1] After all the effort put into day school education, we are losing members of our community- some of them to the right but many more to the left by their not continuing on the path of modern Orthodoxy. What are your thoughts?
2] How should we relate to Homosexuality? Is it a choice or natural orientation? Do we accept them as synagogue members? Enroll their kids in day school? Welcome them into the community?
3] Could we hear your thoughts on women rabbis or women serving in a public position?
4] Why are there so few religious Zionist leaders who defend democracy today?
They offer a good sense of what is bothering the community right now.

Very Short versions of the answers are as follows:
1] Defection from the community- This is not a new phenomena. There were places in Europe where 80% of the youth stopped keeping Shabbat. [AB- There were places that had 95% defection.] It was tough in the 1920’s and 1930’s. It was tough in the 1950’s. And even in the 1970’s Peter Berger would not have envisioned the rise of yeshivot and observance. Back in the 1950’s almost no one had a Sukkah, today everyone in Teaneck has a sukkah.
There is no need to question the money spent on day schools since that is our spiritual goal, our axiology, our formative activity. What else would we build and spend our money on?

2] He did not grasp the first part of the question at first. Rabbi Nati Helfgott, who drafted the Statement of Principle and was named one of the Forward’s 50 last week, was in the first row reformulated the question. The answer was formulated a tension between minimizing the issue by considering the person halakhic with an idiosyncrasy and on the other hand letting this aspect of their life override our ability to see their commitment to learning and a halakhic life. (Someone mentioned to me how 15 years ago even this position would have been rare in the community).

3] He did not want to use analogous thinking to other cases, if a woman cannot be A or B then she cannot be a rabbi. We have to appreciate everything she can do like teach and we have to appreciate the inherent virtue of being conservative in our judgment.

4] In 1952, in the first elections in Israel, the religious party went from those who God forefend davened in shorts to the Agudah and the gedolim supported it. More 1950’s stories.

Immediate reaction to those I spoke to: Oy we are getting old. I remember Rav Aharon when he gave me my bechinah in 1974. He was so strong and robust., now he is frail. And Oy, I use 1970’s stories with my college age kids the way Rav Aharon starts everything with a early 1950’s story.

Some (many?) were frustrated with the answers as not addressing the community. And happily, a HS senior reacted to the talk with “It was really good.” He gave subtle answers framing the issues in an intelligent way and showing how to think critically about the topic. He showed both sides on the issues. But for the passage of time, I think many of the old timer would have given the same answer, but they cannot go back again.
(If you were there and think I did not get the details correct, then email with corrections.)

Even academics must eventually return books to the library. I have had out for several years the following title and the library wants it back.

Andrew Beaujon , Body piercing saved my life: inside the phenomenon of Christian rock Da Capo Press (2006)
As a rock critic his goal was to review Christian rock, but as a non-fiction author he sought to explain the paradox or tension between the amoral world of rock and the Christian version of it.

From The Blurb

A look at some of the colorful figures who have transformed the Christian rock scene into a flourishing industry. A non-Christian, but a devoted fan of music and a senior contributing writer for Spin..Never condescending to his subjects, the author appears to hold a genuine curiosity as to what makes Christian rockers tick, and they in turn welcome his deliberately naive inquiries, making for a refreshingly unbiased view of a subject that many jaded journalists would find easy to mock.

Everyone in the world of Christian rock is connected to anti-religious rock more than the average person, yet the believers see themselves as more pure than those Christians who are religious but listen to ordinary music. What does it mean to situate one’s religion in the raunchiest part of culture? He describes a culture that is indebted to MTV and the internet, cheers for red meat, and has pop culture references to Hooters, Paris Hilton and reality TV. Preachers learn their sermon timing from stand –up comediennes like Eddie Murphy. How is this Christian?

The parallel to the Christian rock youth movements are the kiruv organizations that based culturally on videos, songs, pop-culture- offer trips to Great Adventure- offer classes in drumming and karate- and offer much of the same raunchiness. Torah study and mizvot are not the focus, rather personal states like commitment, belief, and acceptance of Torah as a reedom from doubt.

Andrew Beaujon in his interview finds that the preachers of rock declare: “We preach in an un-Christian place,” America is a non-religious country. The youth care about culture, music, TV and “we need to be conversant.” He finds an implicit dualism –“the world” is part for one’s religious life and one need to put the world aside. The world is sin and temptation. Second, there is the dualism in each person. People have a sinful nature, so we have to wean them away from it.
How much of kiruv reconnection to Judaism is weaning them away from the evil outside world? And how much is a support group knowing that people sin and need to group support of a shabbaton not to sin? What is the anthropology of outreach?

In addition, is it related to the mainstream? To be technical for a moment, Durkheim distinguishes between group and grid organization. In group organization, the religious moment is the separation from the non-religious world-the impure. Group identity is formed by excluding things. Grid organization is the hierarchal arrangement based on knowledge and observance. The religious goals for a grid arrangement are the aspirations of making oneself a scholar or scrupulous within one’s community. If people are lax within a grid community, then one needs for them to re-ascend the grid through Torah study and scrupulousness. Blaming the outside world would not work for a slid down the grid. In contrast, youth movement kiruv is about group identify and conveying a sense of difference from the outside? For Durkheim, group activities like discussing pop-culture or enthusiasm does not and cannot lead to grid strictness in observance.

Beaujon points out that personal testimonies are the secret currency of evangelicalism” Should we use hip-hop? Answer — Can and did it save anyone? One can use anything no matter how raunchy if you think it will lead to commitment. What are the criteria for integrating pop-culture into Kiruv? How do we know hip-hop is good to use? It works.
Christian rock preaches not to curse, but Beaujon notes that some of the successful preachers curse for shock value. The preacher shows he is cool by doing it. It somehow teaches that even though one has rejected pop culture, yet one is still part of it. Needless to say, mainstream preachers neither have to tell their congregants not to swear like a rapper, nor would they even violate it to be cool. Christian Rock is a religiosity situated in the simultaneous acceptance and rejection of pop-culture.

Beaujon deal with the case of second generation Evangelical kids. They say they have been saved and gained much through Christian rock even though they were already raised in a religious home and have done little tangible in the year to repent or change their ways. They don’t have more of any criteria of observance or attendance. Beaujon claims that since the second generation does not really want more demands for alteration of behavior, therefore those raised in religious homes have anger and resentment because they cannot get the euphoria and freedom from doubt. (They are lots of Jewish parallels here).

In the world of Christian rock, they preach abstinence by talking about sex often and decrying the immoral sex on TV. (Compare the endless Jewish sessions on negiah.) When it comes to statistics, those attracted to Evangelical chastity have the highest unwed mother rate (think Bristol Palin). The lowest rate are those studious types who prefer science fairs and are working to get into competitive programs. (On the Jewish side, getting someone turned onto serious learning (or math team) changes his life more than decrying secular values.)

Beaujon compares Christian Rock to jam bands. The attraction is not the artistry but the ability to tap into a sense of freedom and adventure. They have a sense of swagger, the fun of winging it, heartfelt muddled beliefs and the promise of self-guided education. Beaujon thinks that Americans try on identities and they need maps to navigate the muddledness of life. Christain music offers a chance to try on identities and boundaries.

Bono who is always speaking about his Christian faith is not the model. Beaujon points out, U2 are banned because of their “doubting” lyrics – and Bono’s criticism of grasping American tele-evangelists. Though they will play cover versions of their songs.

The mainstream Evangelical magazine Christianity Today published a review of the book in which the author wanted not to like Christian rock since it does not adhere to the mainstream straight world of the heartland church. They don’t want believers with spike wristbands. The magazine questions the very religiosity of the bands and these preachers. If you spend all your time in the music world, then you may be more non-Christian than you think. (Think of what a mainstream rabbi would say about a kiruv jam band.)

Show me an evangelical between the ages of 15 and 50, and I’ll show you an evangelical who can tell this story (or something much like it): I used to listen to secular music, then I discarded it all and listened only to Christian music. Then I realized I didn’t like much Christian music, so I slowly started listening to secular music again
It doesn’t take Beaujon long to note Christian rock’s tortured existence. Not only does the audience choose it as an oft-reluctant alternative to mainstream music, but many Christian musicians are themselves forever sorting out their own relationship to the non-Christian artists they esteem, the non-Christian listeners they covet, and the non-Christian labels with whom they’d like to sign.
At the Pedro show at Cornerstone, the central question—for Beaujon and the thousands of packed-in teenagers, if not for Bazan—is whether Bazan will flaunt the festival’s unwritten ban against curse words and include his lyrical f-bombs. He does, the audience squeals, and Beaujon marvels at how evangelical kids can love someone who has rejected their culture:
Which raises a question, one that Beaujon’s project and the entire Christian music industry begs: What makes music Christian? Is it the mission statement of the labels? The theological content of the lyrics? The faith of the musicians or producers? The faith of the listeners? The profit margins devoted to the poor? Surely none of the above, for all exist on a sliding scale….
Well—here’s a fool’s axiom: Both inside the parallel universe of Christian music and in every other universe, the only one who can make music Christian is Christ

Substitute the word Torah in the last sentence. Mission, outreach, faith, dedication, commitment are all second to Torah.

The book also opens up the question of the quality of religious culture. We tend not to have a frame of reference for judging religious art or thought. We accept kitch and don’t compare them to the broader world. In this Beaujon is indebted to the 1981 classic by Franky Schaffer, Addicted to Mediocrity: Contemporary Christians and the Art. In this work, Schaffer asked: we don’t hire builders, accountants, or doctors just because they are Christian, so why do we do this in art and thought? (No shortage of Jewish parallels.)

My interest here is how culture and relgion interact, specifically the rle of pop culture in Judaism. I am not overly interested in discussing kiruv.

Attn Wingnuts: This is not an attack on Kiruv. And there are many different organizations and changes over time, therefore I dont need your story globalized. I did not give Jewish specifics because my emphasis was on Beaujon.