with this in mind, i thought it was worth setting out a few of the principles that i think are fairly basic to pursuing both the more aggressive and the more peace-loving sides without compromising the integrity of either. i believe we can both aspire to a more peaceful future at the same time as defending ourselves against those who threaten our society; i think these might be the things that we hold in common and the things which we believe are not held in common by those we oppose:

1. the belief that muslims have the potential to integrate into british (and other western) society as productively as jews have.
2. the belief that eventually mainstream islam will decisively reject the path of taking practical steps to take over the world and relegate this safely to the realm of the eschatological – at present the islamist movement still actually thinks it can win over this debate.
3. the belief that peaceful coexistence is possible even in the middleeast, given goodwill and a real desire to find a workable solution.
4. the acceptance that, islamism aside, there are a lot of people out there who have an unreasonable prejudice against any and all muslims, not just the fundamentalist sort – and that if we can only get the mainstream communities committed to a pluralistic, polycultural modern world rather than a salafist 7th century cloud-cuckoo-land, a commitment to standing shoulder-to-shoulder with muslims in fighting those islamophobes for their rights to be a part of that future.
5. the acceptance that 1, 3 and 4 also have ethnic dimensions and that we have nothing against arabs, persians, turks, pakistanis, bangladeshis etc qua arabs, persians, turks, pakistanis and bangladeshis etc.

if these can be accepted, without significant reservation, then we can begin to accept and deal with the following challenges that we believe to be real:

• a. that there are some muslims, whether individuals, groups, sects, parties or tendencies, that have the downfall of our society in mind and consequently hold what we consider to be unacceptable points of view – let’s say 13%, for argument’s sake; not even a particularly sizeable minority in relative terms, but in absolute terms, given the number of muslims there actually are, enough to cause problems for both their own communities and wider society.
• b. that some of these groups are busily trying to co-opt and own all the islamic community structures that presently exist, as well as present their narrative as that of “all” muslims.
• c. that these people have, over the years, received large amounts of funding and inspiration (with strings attached) from saudi and other insalubrious middle eastern places, as well as from credulous, starry-eyed orientalists in the guardianista / multiculti camp – without strings attached.
• d. that these people are busily engaged in not only political entryism a la tower hamlets, but in hoodwinking well-meaning liberals into acting as figleaves for their disingenuous political and religious programme and thereby bolstering their own credibility.
• e. that if you take a look into the history of many of these socalled respectable “community leaders”, you don’t have to look very hard before you start finding the bloody trail of the bangladeshi genocide as well as the knuckle-prints of the global islamist movements like the ikhwaan and hizb ut-tahrir, let alone all the dodgy things that get said in arabic, farsi, urdu and so on compared to what gets said in english for the benefit of the western media.

if one can accept all of these things, perhaps dialogue can get beyond the ceremonial and cynical to the meaningful and productive. i myself have to do some serious thinking about where i stand on “platform-sharing” issues in particular. on one hand, i try and follow mandela’s excellent principle of “talking to anyone that will talk to me”, but on the other, my deep distrust of certain people and groups, not to mention 16 years of experience, have led me to conclude that there are some people that it is not worth engaging with, like, say, the al-muhajigoonies of this world, who deserve nothing but merciless lampooning in the most liberal of terms (of late the ahmadis have been added to this list – so i saw with displeasure this morning an advert for them on the side of a bus). similarly, i have to consider the rabin principle – that it is one’s enemies that one makes peace with, not one’s friends and that platforms for dialogue will sooner or later have to address the points that i raise above – but you have to suspend certain questions until trust has been established; you can’t jump straight into a conversation about israel, for instance.

i would be most interested in whether people think i have the basis of the argument down correctly. alternatively, you can all call me an islamophobic racist or something.

A synagogue in the St. Louis, Missouri, area is exhibiting photos and stories about Albanian Muslims who risked their lives to rescue Jews during World War II.

The exhibit is based on Norman Gershman’s book Besa: Muslims Who Saved Jews in World War II, which we posted about last year.

a falafel for the effendi!

he is also a man of many contradictions. this is the man that gave the principle of “land for peace” the sanction of halakhah (jewish law) – no mean contribution to an eventual settlement – the man who stood up successfully for the rights of the ethiopian jews against the demands of the askhenazi haredi establishment that they convert, who supports the top-level inter-religious dialogue forum known as the alexandria process and a man who has consistently fought for the rights of blue-collar workers with large, traditionalist (but not necessarily that religious) sephardi and mizrahi families, which of course is more or less the majority of shas voters. interestingly enough, the same attributes are also characteristic of most israeli arabs, which has led to the  ironic outcome that quite a few of them end up voting shas for the social and economic programmes it supports. it is ironic, of course, because of r. yosef’s tendency (for all that he was born in baghdad and is a native speaker of arabic) to make astoundingly racist and bigoted comments about arabs, usually in his saturday night religious lectures, but also more or less whenever he gets the opportunity. he is also not a stranger to upsetting nearly anyone else; here are a few of his public statements that have contributed a great deal to peace, harmony and reconciliation…..not.

“It is forbidden to be merciful to [arabs]. You must send missiles to them and annihilate them. They are evil and damnable.”

he later claimed this only referred to arab terrorists, but it hasn’t been forgotten.

“the holocaust was G!D’s retaliation aginst the reincarnated souls of jewish sinners”

this managed to offend all ashkenazim and anyone who didn’t subscribe to the kabbalistic doctrine of the karmic “transmigration of souls”; just call it his glenn hoddle moment.

“Let our enemies and those who hate us die [referring to palestinian authority president abbas] and all these evil people should perish from this world. G!D should strike them with a plague, them and these Palestinians.”

for which he had to make a grovelling apology to mubarak and others.
referring to the black inhabitants of new orleans as “kushim” – and that hurricane katrina was george bush’s punishment for supporting the gaza disengagement, enough said.

on why non-religious israeli soldiers get killed:

“They don’t observe the Sabbath, they don’t observe the Torah, they don’t pray, they don’t put on phylacteries every day. Is it any wonder that they’re killed? It’s no wonder. May the Almighty have mercy on them and bring them back to religion.”

let’s forget for a moment that he expects these people to fight while his own supporters sit about studying Torah on government stipends; pheuuwww.

and the latest delightful remark, of course, is this:

“The sole purpose of non-Jews is to serve Jews. Why are gentiles needed? They will work, they will plow, they will reap. We will sit like an effendi and eat. That is why gentiles were created.”

i mean, really? is this what judaism has survived 3,000 years for? if this is what judaism is about, i’ll eat my own tefillin. what are we to make of this embarrassment? his opinions, especially the most recent, beggar belief. there is no apparent successor to his credibility; aryeh deri was once touted as such, but got jailed for fraud and racketeering (although admittedly there was quite a lot of racism involved in the prosecution as well, you don’t see the askhenazi rabbonim getting investigated although they’re just as bad). eli yishai, the leader of the shas party in the knesset, is widely regarded as a parochial sock puppet who gives little away to yosef in the outspoken bigotry stakes. shmuel eliyahu, another provincial powerbroker, has just caused another outcry with a disgusting call for jews not to rent property to arabs.

my own opinion, frankly, is that he’s senile or, quite possibly, has had some kind of minor stroke; it is not uncommon for such people to vocalise prejudices that they had previously known enough to avoid saying out loud. of course, that’s not really any excuse, he shouldn’t be thinking like that in the first place. all in all, this is a deplorable state of affairs for the religious leadership of the world’s sephardic and mizrahi jews to be in. there was a time when r. yosef provided principled leadership (not just land for peace, he also opposes ladies’ wigs); in fact, there was a time when sephardi and mizrahi rabbis were the intellectual and philosophical élite, the most cultured, the most urbane and the most open-minded. clearly this era is long over; i’m not a great enthusiast for the doctrine of the “decline of the generations“, but i have to admit this is pretty persuasive stuff in its favour, certainly the current leadership provides very little reason for optimism. roll on the next generation; at least we can see some changes happening at grass-roots level with the new rabbis coming through, but it will be a long time before this filters up to the oxygen-poor, brain-dead level of israeli religious politics.

given that the board of deputies and, by the looks of it, the community as a whole, has withdrawn cooperation with the programme, as it was clearly interpreted as a hatchet job, the same way that “the root of all evil?” was – tendentiously edited and, wherever possible, using extreme examples as if they were the norm. of course whenever the jewish community was mentioned, it was invariably accompanied by a shot of someone strictly orthodox – small boys with giant peyot, or behatted, abundantly bearded, penguinish yeshiva bochurs staring through bottle-top glasses. as we all know, all jews look just like that.

the jewish community yesterday, apparently

a salient example was that of the british humanist society researcher pulling out the “shocking” example of the jewish school that does 8 hours of “religious education” a week compared to 6 hours of science. i wonder which school it was? they didn’t say if it was a mainstream united synagogue school or a strictly-orthodox school, of course.

what the anti-faith-schoolers don’t seem to get is that in this “8 hours of religious education”, they’re *not teaching theology* or “how to be unscientific” – they’re teaching practical skills of language, textual analysis and interpretation. in this sense, the correct analogy is not between a “faith school” and a “secular school”, but between a “specialist school” and a “generalist school” – i don’t see dawkins jumping all over sylvia young because her schools devote 10 hours+ a week to performing arts compared to 6 hours of national curriculum science. these kids need to PRACTICE – and so do religious kids, whether they’re learning Qu’ran or Torah or gita or granth. most religion – and this is an area where the preponderance of christianity in this country distorts the debate – requires considerable grasp of both practical techniques and core knowledge, in the same way that you’d expect a specialist technology college to spend extra time on programming languages to an level of detail not matchable by a specialist modern languages college.

anyway, stereotypes apart, like most of the jewish people (and christians and muslims) i know, religious or not, faithschoolers or not, i do struggle with whether we’re doing enough to encourage critical thinking. and i think it is worth mentioning that, in my opinion, in general, we’re not, which is part of the reason that the kiruv and dawah organisations which are, as far as i’m concerned, the vanguard of clerical fascism, are gaining ground. whether pro- or anti- people don’t know enough about religion to make informed choices and, as a result, many are either accepting it for badly-thought-through, poorly-rationalised reasons, or seeking to have it eliminated for equally misguided reasons. there isn’t a strong enough voice saying that you can be both traditionally religious and a clear, critical thinker, or that even though you don’t believe something yourself you still think it has a role to play. and, in point of fact, i don’t hand over the programming of my kids’ minds to their school, to teach them “the correct way” to think, that has to be my responsibility as a parent as well. part of the problem with the faith schools debate, it seems to me, is that focusing on theology and the problems with critical thinking misses why faith schools are really needed – it isn’t to teach them to “think correctly”, it is to teach them the skills to live in that particular community, which are time-consuming to learn, the same way as if you wanted to grow up to be an orchestra player, you’d need to go to music lessons and spend a lot of extra time practicing in order to be able to perform to the required standard. because christianity does not, generally, require these sorts of skills (say, for example, latin and greek, or scholastic argumentation) it is a lot harder to say how they clearly add value, other than that by all the motivated parents competing to get in increases the performance of the school – i think it might in fact be just another variety of the hawthorn effect.

getting back to the main point about the critical thinking deficit, however, i think a major part of critical thinking is the ability to debate with people of differing opinions. this, i feel, is typified by the current debate over free speech and offence. i analyse the issue and i see a continuum, starting with unintentional offence, going through intentional offence, through harassment to ultimately incitement to violence. it seems to me the debate is currently polarised between those who see all offence as tantamount to incitement to violence and those who see even incitement to violence as merely an expression of free speech. considering the vehemence with which my religion and ethnicity is attacked by the former and their apparent inability to comprehend the continuum connection, one might think that i would go to that opposite extreme – as indeed i have been accused of many times, when pointing out instances of jew-hatred and being told i was merely being hysterical. in fact, i am naturally far closer to faisal’s espousal of the “fry/hitchens standard”, if you like – “so you’re offended? so fecking what?”, as i believe in free speech. my difficulty is where the line should be drawn, which needs a far more nuanced perception than i can currently bring to the debate.

an excellent example of the challenges of critical thinking is currently being debated at harry’s place and elsewhere in this intellectual neighbourhood of the blogosphere between edmund standing and others:

“why would anyone want to take books that manifestly do make assertions about ultimate reality and give clear commands about how humans should behave, the punishments they should incur for thinking or behaving differently, and so on, and then delude themselves and others into thinking that actually those books don’t say what they clearly do say, or attempt to ‘reinterpret’ those books in a way obviously at variance with their intended meaning?”

in other words, if someone says “kill the bastards”, he means “kill the bastards”, not “engage them in debate” – and you should take that statement at face value. the trouble is, mr standing, that *isn’t the way we do it in judaism* (and, i would argue, not the way many people do it in islam) – we take challenging statements like that as a jumping off point, assuming that there is more to the basic statement than meets the eye. it is, for us, clearly established by the talmudic debate about the “oven of akhnai” (BT baba metzia 59b) that human interpretation has the power to overrule a “voice from the heavens”, but our *authority* to do this is derived from the Torah’s plain meaning: “it is not in heaven” (deuteronomy 30) – in other words, that it is for us to interpret how the Text should be interpreted, that’s how it’s designed in the first place, not as an instruction manual free from ambiguity. jewish texts are based on cardinal principles of interpretative methodology and it is understanding how these work that constitutes a large part of the training that jewish children undergo when they are understanding their texts. i would go so far as to say that you can see the difference between people with this training and people without it is abundantly evident from the attitudes of, say, your average bible-belt christian and those of your averagely educated student of jewish law – the latter would not consider carrying out a punishment from leviticus, or even suggesting that it should be carried out as stated in the plain text without the full range of checks, balances and protective safeguards detailed in hundreds of folio pages of Talmud, commentaries and halakhah, under the precise circumstances in which such conditions apply. yet what some people seem to object to is interpretations based on simplistic misunderstandings. the objection then is:

“We don’t look at the work of medieval cartographers and then try to ‘reinterpret’ their maps so they fit with modern understandings of geography.”

well, no, but this isn’t a physical phenomenon here, it’s a legal framework, so its application is always going to be a matter of interpretation. i really don’t see what’s so hard to understand about that – but nonetheless, i don’t see an authoritative argument being made in return for the benefit of those who might not understand why interpretation is important; G!D Forbid, someone might think that that’s what those texts actually mean, or that G!D actually Wants us to behave like bronze age maniacs, when nothing could be further from the truth.

r. jonathan sacks once said, in conversation with john humphrys i believe, that the Torah seeks to teach us to learn to think for ourselves; initially, like a parent, G!D Chastises us and then Picks us up – but there is an expectation that we learn, over time, to pick ourselves up and eventually, not to fall over in the first place. i would argue that developing critical thinking is a salient example of precisely that and that the Commandment to do so is itself a Divine Mandate – so objections such as this:

“In every other area of human thought and writing, we turn to the latest, most advanced ideas, not to the primitive ideas of men of the past.”

should be shown as the red herrings they are. of course, this objection is foreseen:

“There is absolutely no rational basis for ‘reinterpreting’ ancient texts to make them appear relevant to today, nor any objective criteria for how this should be carried out, or to what extent such texts should be ‘liberally’ reinterpreted.”

but why should such criteria be objective? do we demand objective criteria against which to measure the Torah? do we demand that the world be judged against the Torah’s criteria? no, we do not – by the Torah’s own command. nor do we always demand a “liberal” interpretation. the point is that the giants of Torah throughout history to the modern era have always provided for the best of modernity to be understood, whether as “the wisdom of the nations” or as “Torah and wisdom”, but this perspective is in danger from the tendency to look inwards, to assume we have all the answers, from fear and suspicion of the outside world. simply to assert that “it’s not a valid question”, or that “it comes from an impure source” is not going to cut it in the long-term, whether or not you’re able to control the sources of people’s knowledge; and, if this is what is sought, it is both immoral and contrary to the justice that the Torah commands us in the most emphatic terms to pursue.

we need to understand and respond to these questions and attacks as a bona fide challenge, as if they were asked in an open-minded way – because regardless of whether the people conducting the public polemic are open-minded or not, similar questions will always be asked from “inside the camp” – and not to be able to address them effectively will prove the case of the public polemicists.

recently, i gave up posting on pickled politics, partly because of the level of personal animosity i was facing, but mostly just in frustration at my apparent inability to get my point across. now, i suppose i have nobody very much to blame for that apart from myself, but i’ve never felt that was a problem before now. now, i think i’m starting to work out what it is that is bothering me; certainly, it’s not about the denizens of one blog, or even the blogosphere, or even the media. it’s not any one set of views, not any one person, but a set of trends, a collective movement i sense in wider society.

one of the things i like about the spittoon and my co-contributors is that they take a robust approach towards the cosy relationship between the left and the various apologists for, supporters of and partisans of islamist extremism. they take, of course, an equally dim view of other forms of clerical fascism, whether it be jewish, christian, or hindu, although, of course, we are often excoriated for not writing sufficiently on these subjects. and why is that? well, the answer that “they’re not as big a problem” simply won’t do. clearly, the activities of the likes of rss/shiv sena in india, or hardcore fundamentalists in the american south ultimately affect all of us. for me personally, the behaviour of both the extreme west bank settlers and that of rejectionist ultra-orthodoxy evokes both profound heartache and deep anger – just as the “as-a-jew” clique that only appear as jews in order to display their preening self-importance whenever an opportunity to attack israel arises. however, i would nonetheless argue that, from the perspective of wider UK society, these concerns are less immediate, in that these groups have no meaningful accommodation with either our government or the UK media, however influential they may be in the communities they come from. what bothers me, really, is what the effects of ongoing and intensifying fundamentalism on me, my family and community and wider society – in this, locally speaking, islamists are in the vanguard, as the leading proponents and practitioners of violence against my community specifically and, generally, against UK civil society.

the question inevitably arises – who’s really worse? well, i think i would on balance come down in favour of the idea that wherever a particular group becomes influential and the closer they come to the levers of power, the more of a problem they are in a particular country. thus, in the UK, the utterly misguided, racism-of-lower-expectations the-west-is-ultimately-responsible-for-everything-bad-y’know attitude has allowed the entryism of islamist organisations and sympathisers everywhere from the police to government to the left-wing media. but would it be any different anywhere else? i expect not – militant fundamentalist christians are busily inching closer to the levers of power in washington, india has had already had one bjp government and i think we’re all aware of the subversion of mainstream democracy and the processes of civil society in israel by the religious parties and the settler lobby. we’ve got a lot of muslim fundamentalists here in the UK and, in a profound act of ignorance and credulity, we’ve allowed islamic education to be systematically outsourced to salafi and wahhabi dawa organisations for a generation, with entirely predictable results – i think we can say the same of many european countries, although i would fall well short of the apocalyptic and hysterical “eurabia” scenario – in fact, i’d be more worried personally about the behaviour of the catholic party in poland led by an anti-semitic priest and any prospective alliance of a russian political party with the orthodox church – not trend anyone jewish can afford to ignore.

of course, in europe particularly, this isn’t the first time we’ve been here. there was of course an “enlightenment”, which consisted in large part of reaction against the authoritarianism of various forms of christianity, whether by trying to eliminate it altogether and replace it with a sort of ersatz state paganism, as in france, or whether to regulate it as a sort of national industry, as in germany and scandinavia, or whether to simply satirise and philosophise it into a manageable social pressure and community support lobby, as in britain. the enlightenment taught that religion was nothing but a corrupt power structure which only the mad, the bad and the deluded would indulge. as we also know, removing religion simply forced the mad, the bad and the deluded to find other channels for their unpleasant attitudes and activities. we still see this outdated and reductionist position being reinvented for modern times using all the tools of modern cultural influence, from popular science to childrens’ books to comedy. religious people are portrayed as knaves or fools. there appears to be no middle ground, no compromise possible – religion must be rooted out, cleansed and exterminated.

of course, we’ve been there before too – modern fundamentalism, as karen armstrong (before she started to become part of the problem by sucking up to the goons at MPAC-UK) pointed out in her still masterful study of fundamentalism “the battle for G!D” evolved largely as a reaction against the enforced, clumsy and often brutal imposition of modernity on societies all around the world. the fundamentalisms we have today have reached their current forms because of the political, technological and social realities of the societies in which they evolved. their priorities and obsessions are driven by the battles they originally fought, against pluralism, liberalisation of dress, behaviour, increased social equality (or inequality), against practically irreversible geopolitical realities, against the aftereffects of wars and economic dislocation. those who give aid and comfort to fundamentalists are inevitably picking and choosing where they have shared priorities and obsessions – anti-imperialism, anti-abortion, anti-homosexuality, anti-israel, social breakdown, the emancipation of women, the legacy of slavery – but they are always at odds with fundamental features of the societies they criticise.

what i see developing, however, is a sort of multi-lateral polarisation in which the first casualty is moderation, the second is tolerance and the third is social consensus. the effects of this, however, touch all of us, but the effects are peculiarly corrosive on those of us who are able to combine amd integrate reason and religion and deal with the subtleties of creation, revelation and evolution. we are frequently at odds with obscurantists and bigots within our faith, but we are now fighting a rearguard defence against anti-religious forces, without any letup in the attack on reasonableness, complexity and dialogue that continues from reactionary fanatics. both sides, naturally, accuse us of giving aid and comfort to the other in its mission to destroy them – if we’re not with them, we’re against them – and no prisoners will be taken.

so, on one hand, we have the forces of militant anti-religion mounting attacks on everything from headgear to faith schools, on the other we have the walls of the ghetto being built anew, only with gun-ports this time. we can also see the social contract of the enlightenment renewed; previously, the deal was “give up your difference and you’ll get rights as a citizen” – this time, it’s “you’ve abused your rights as a citizen, we can no longer tolerate your differences”. the behaviour of religious fanatics, in their quest to dominate their own communities, has destroyed the delicate balance which allowed religion to be an integrated part of civil society. naturally, comes the response: they want all or nothing? fine – let them have nothing. but what of those of us who always wanted to co-exist? who prize our cultural and spiritual distincitiveness? oh no, distinctiveness is still allowed – but religion will no longer be a valid reason for it. diversity in sexuality, gender, disability, intelligence, talent, wealth – all these are permitted, but not religion. we are offered the choice – everything or nothing. well, we want neither.

i refuse to hide in the ghetto. i contribute to this society. i work. i pay my taxes. i don’t walk about naked, nor do i hide my face from the world. i will not assimilate, nor will i act as if i am living in another country or another century. i refuse to eat foods that are forbidden to me and i refuse to forbid those foods to others who may want them. i refuse to give up the sabbath, the festivals, the Torah and my other sacred texts – and i refuse to impose my vision of them on those who do not share my perspective. if i am attacked, i will defend myself. if i am insulted, i will respond in kind. i am not looking for a fight, but i will not shrink from one. i will not allow others to define what i am. the search for social consensus has been a long and painful one – and now it has been destroyed again, by the hubris and arrogance of religious and anti-religious fanatics. i do not know if we can put the pieces back together again, but there has to be a basis for us to live together – both enforced segregation and enforced assimilation are fascistic responses.

judaism has always been not so much a culture or a religion as it has been a 3000+ year-old argument. there is nothing so boring as loads of people violently agreeing with each other – except perhaps two groups of people refusing to concede anything that the other is saying has any value or validity. the counter-enlightenment is in full swing, without any sign that it has learnt anything from the enlightenment.

“Do Anglicans, even moderates, really think of G!D as a sexless being? I was under the impression that most moderate religious people still think of G!D as male. People could use the singular ‘they’ and refer to a ‘parent’ if they were really that bothered.”

i think she could with some justice aim this question at judaism, but it is, nonetheless, a bit of an old chestnut. the best way i can answer it is that in the same way that we deal with anthropomorphism in the text: G!D Isn’t male any more than G!D Has a “hand”, or a “back”, G!D Forbid. when the Text speaks in these terms, it is only to be understood as the way *we* understand the interaction, not the *actual reality* – hence, when we speak of G!D as “Father” or “King”, these are merely the interactions and relevant relationships that are being described, not the Ultimate Reality of the Divine. by the same token, a number of incredibly important Divine Names and interaction/relationships are *female*, such as “E-L ShaDaY”, which comes from the word ShaDaYiM (breasts) and “Ha-RaHaMaN”, which comes the word ReHeM (womb), not to mention the considerable symbology of the Divine Feminine in kabbalah around the SheKhiNaH (Divine Presence) and “Matronit” and the male-female interrelationships actually *within* the G!DHead. one might also mention the idea that the “community of israel” is synonymous with G!D’s “bride” on some level, so that would require one of us to be “male” and the other “female” in that particular situation.

“And then there’s Jesus – no-one could lead themselves to believe he was genderless. Judaism has Moses, Islam has Mohammed – all these prophets are male. How does a person get around that one?”

perhaps by mentioning the seven major jewish prophetesses, sarah, miriam, deborah, hannah, abigail, huldah and esther – (talmudic reference: BT megillah 14a)? according to the great authority rashi, rebecca, rachel and leah should also be included.

a more serious criticism, i believe, is the following:

“If one accepts and follows traditions without question purely on the basis that they are traditions, this leaves the door wide open for all kinds of nasty things. In general, it silences and disables those who disagree with the traditions and would like to do things differently. It’s those ‘harmless’ traditions which can make people feel stifled and like there’s only one right way to do things. At the very least, they discourage creativity, critical thinking and independence.”

this is certainly a position with which we at the spittoon can identify – certainly within judaism (and, i and others would argue, within islam as well) the idea that there is One True Way Of Doing Stuff is a corrosive and oppressive idea not borne out by a truly insightful examination of the texts involved. however, the accompanying analysis is flawed:

“One can usually assess how harmless a tradition is by examining what the penalties are, if any, of not following it. In your example, I would imagine that a Jewish/Muslim pork-eater would face many negative reactions from their community, plus residual religious guilt, and that this is probably the real reason why they ‘like following the tradition’.”

now, this might be a perfectly adequate summary of how the uneducated “feel” about the law in question, in fact, the penalty in halakhah is the indication of exactly how important the principle incurring the penalty is in the first place. in fact, halakhically, the penalty is thirty-nine lashes, a comparatively light penalty compared to breaking shabbat, which is a stoning offence. now, before you get all bent out of shape on how unpleasant it is to get lashed, you’d have to also consider the standard of evidence, which required five further tests before the lashes could be administered:

1. the pork-eating in question would have to be done in front of two kosher witnesses (many, many difficulties in establishing what one of these looks like)
2. the two witnesses would need to have absolutely no discrepancy in their statements.
3. the pork-eater would have to receive a warning from the witnesses that by so doing, he would incur a penalty of lashes.
4. the pork-eater would have to respond that he had understood the warning and the penalty, reiterating precisely what they both were.
5. the eating would then have to occur within 3 seconds of this response.

incidentally, to be binding, the verdict would also have to be handed down by a properly constituted and duly authorised religious court – and there hasn’t been such a court for approximately 1500 years, but considering the re-establishment of such courts is a religious duty, i personally would prefer to rely on the other safeguards. even so, i hope you can see from the standard required that anyone who actually meets it is clearly out to make a point. oh, and, incidentally, if you ran away before the verdict was carried out, you couldn’t be re-arrested. in such a case, the negative feeling from your community is likely to be the only sanction.

another interesting challenge is made here:

“To what extent, for a religious person, is their holy book really their holy book, if they disregard most of its teachings (or haven’t even read it all the way through)?”

for jews, as we were born into a covenantal relationship, we are as subject to it as to the laws of the country we were born into. the same obtains with UK law. presumably amy’s not suggesting that i’m not obliged to follow the regulations of her majesty’s revenue collectors despite the fact that i may never have read them or heard of their provisions? by the same token:

“To align oneself with a movement, an organisation, that one disagrees with at least in part, knowing that in doing so you are giving it power – numbers at least, and in many cases, money too?”

i am not sure how this is different from being a citizen of a country whose policies you may or may not agree with – you’ve still got to pay your taxes.

as part of this discussion, i analysed deuteronomy 22:29 in its context. this provoked a number of further responses including:

“Regarding the Deuteronomy verse (22:29), it says that ’she shall be his wife, because he hath humbled her’ – humbled? That’s rather chilling, no? Is that a mistranslation too?”

not only that, but it is also misrepresenting what the text says, which is ‘AiNah” – “forced”, but not in a *physically* violent way, as in verse 25, more in such a way as to give her no choice but to marry him. i would say that this represents bringing about a marriage by “putting the woman in a compromising position”; if you know pride and prejudice, it’s what wickham does to lydia bennet to get money out of the family; he has to be bribed to marry her. the Torah is trying here to prevent the woman becoming unmarriageable; there is nothing to say that she can’t *then* divorce *him* (after betrothal and before final marriage), thus retaining her autonomy and a hefty divorce payout; it is just that *he* is forever prevented from divorcing *her*, not the other way around. i would understand this verse as a face-saving exercise.

amy then goes on to say:

“Regardless of whether rape occurred or it was ‘just sex’, isn’t it a bit sexist to generally suggest that it’s okay to buy a woman in this way?”

now, i’m not sure you can really project your attitude back to the bronze age as if human values and relationships have always been the same; i mean, that is the same sort of point of view that would reduce shakespeare’s “merchant of venice” to simple antisemitism. the initial audience of the Torah (as opposed to G!D) wouldn’t really understand what you’re getting at here. the thing is, you aren’t “buying a woman”; you’re contracting for procreative services, as it were, which can only be done by ensuring exclusivity on the woman’s part. the woman must enter into the contract without coercion and of her own free will and can exit it at her discretion on virtually any grounds (including bad breath) and is, for the duration of the contracted marriage, entitled to a statutory level of maintenance (and alimony), clothing, housing and sexual satisfaction, breach of which by the husband is, needless to say, grounds for divorce. this quite simply was revolutionary within the context in which the Torah was given; not only in that the woman had to agree, but that she maintained her rights, her property and right of cancellation. in fact, it compares positively to modern civil law in most respects – most people agree that merely falling in love is a rather worse basis for marriage than shared values and clear responsibilities on both sides! both sides contribute assets – the wife’s contribution is *not* a dowry, but her reproductive capabilities, hence:

“(Following your interpretation, it’s a bit like having to pay for something you broke in a shop – fair enough if it’s a vase, but a person? Why does having sex make you a broken person?)”

well, it doesn’t, nor is this implied, although permit me to observe, tongue-in-cheek, that most of us would pay more for new underpants than for second-hand. the statutory levels, in any case, are nominal – in reality, these would in the past have been negotiated, in the case of a woman who had emancipated herself from her father (or previous husband by divorce or widowhood) possibly by the woman herself. and there’s more:

“If God is a supremely knowledgeable being, with ultimate powers, and is perfectly good and moral, why couldn’t he send a clear message – even in the bronze age – that women are people, not property?”

the same reason that G!D also didn’t send the clear message “don’t drive on the wrong side of the road” – it wouldn’t have made sense at the time, only now. the clarity would in fact have been precisely the opposite.

“What stopped him from telling these citizens in no uncertain terms that it’s okay for women to have sex, they don’t have to be virgins until they’re married, and it’s not right to buy and sell them?”

the fact that this wasn’t a student dorm at berkeley, it was bronze age canaan – and if you hopped behind a bush with someone, you’d be liable to end up with your throat slit, or sold into slavery, thus precipitating a blood feud; it wasn’t like there was a police force and cctv; this was the wild fecking west! people took what they could get and, like it or not, if a woman didn’t have protection from a father, guardian or husband, she might be fair game, unless she stayed within the protection of the law. to be honest, this feels somewhat anachronistic reasoning, based on a very different axiomatic substructure, as the following statement identifies:

“I find it quite convenient that you’re explaining away misogyny as mistranslation, and contradictions as just not knowing the ‘right’ context of the verses in question. You seem to be taking it as your a priori assumption that there can’t possibly be any real inconsistency in the texts, there can’t possibly be any real misogyny. Why not? Why can’t there be?”

the answer to this is that if, axiomatically, one believes, as i do, that the Torah is a Divine document, any inconsistency in the texts is there to teach us something and the basis of traditional methodologies is the ability to identify the root cause of the inconsistency in order to illustrate the teaching point concerned. this has certainly been our approach as long as we can remember -and, more to the point, this is documented quite a long way back. secondly, in the conception we have of G!D it would make no more sense for G!D to Be a “misogynist” than it would for G!D to have a “hand”, or to “be angry”; these things are simply expressions of how we experience what we interpret out of the text. we believe that G!D Expects us to behave with respect and compassion to each other, not to systematically disadvantage half the human race. now, obviously, if you have different assumptions, then these might include a priori that any statement in the Torah reflects bronze age sensibility and capability in terms of gender relations, science and critical reasoning and therefore there can’t possibly be any real lessons to be learned from it. on this i suspect i might have to differ from you, seeing as how our culture is based almost entirely on this document and in most respects is generally considered to have produced major leaders in each field who are also committed to some of the same assumptions about the document. this is not to say that they are all going to agree with each other all the time:

“Why is your ‘methodology’ necessarily going to result in a clear, unequivocal message?”

because it is based on a clear set of assumptions and underpinned by a unified philosophical structure – i’m not saying that this necessitates clarity and unequivocable messaging in all cases, because it doesn’t, but in the case of this particular verse, it clearly precludes certain interpretations such as “G!D Is a misogynist” as nonsensical. there are some other pertinent questions that obtain:

“On what do you base your faith in it?”

on the fact that this way of doing things has preserved the sole remaining diaspora culture of the ancient world through several millennia of unremitting and occasionally genocidal hostility. in other words, it works.

“How do you know that the eventual interpretation is right, in any case?”

the principle we test it against is “after the majority shall you incline” (exodus 23:2) but we *also* preserve minority opinions (BT bava metzia 59b) in case eventually they become majority.

“What do you check it against?”

it’s peer-reviewed. all jewish law has been aggressively picked apart, analysed, defended or amended on this basis. that is what the talmud documents.

“Then you say that two contradictory positions can both be the word of the ‘living god’? How is that even possible – how can a creator of the universe not make his mind up?”

of course – but “it is not in heaven” (deuteronomy 30:10), so we are told we have to work it out for ourselves, on the authority of the Torah itself, so the majority opinion came down on one side at that time. G!D may well Have an opinion, but in the famous talmudic debate of the “oven of achnai” (the reference given above) the majority decision was to say “bugger off, G!D, this is a human decision now, You Said so in the Torah”.

“Not be 100% clear about his message? Do you not find it slightly odd that all this interpretation is necessary?”

no, we find it incredibly empowering that we are being treated like grown-ups responsible for our own actions, not children with no sense of right or wrong.

“Why doesn’t God reiterate his message and clear things up? Hasn’t he got the power to do this?”

well, yes, obviously, but during the “oven of achnai” debate, the position of the majority was “we do not make legal decisions on the basis of Divine Voices from Heaven”.

we still haven’t quite got to the bottom of the equality debate here, however:

“When I talk about a sense of equality, I am talking about equality between men and women – e.g. what is it that leads you to know that stoning a woman to death for not being a virgin is wrong? Would you only know that it’s wrong if you’d read all the scriptures? Or would you know that it’s wrong based on your own empathy and reasoning? I would argue the latter, seeing as I know it’s wrong, and I haven’t read all the scriptures or engaged in textual interpretation.”

i would argue that the case that you are basing it on your own “empathy and reasoning” alone is not a strong argument. nobody grows up in a vacuum. you have these attitudes because you developed them, based on your upbringing. i would argue that you *have* been influenced indirectly by them because they have influenced the society you grew up in. i can even point to the bit of Torah that it comes from: “you shall love the stranger [person who is different from yourself] for you were strangers in egypt” (leviticus 19:34) nor am i saying that my own reasoning is inoperative – obviously, i needed to use it to apply the verse to this situation, similarly the sages needed to apply it in order to get the relevant safeguards in place to prevent it happening unless it really, really, really, REALLY applied. if you’re going to do something as drastic as stoning a woman to death for not being a virgin, you’d better be really sure that’s what the text says – and that what the text says applies to this EXACT situation.

“This is what I’m talking about. A religious person reads such a horrendous verse, thinks ‘That can’t be right’ and proceeds to delve more deeply into the scriptures to find some way of justifying it.”

i don’t really understand why this should be so wrong – it is the way the Torah does thought experiments; under what circumstances might such a penalty apply? what might justify it in *practice*? are you sure? are you really, really sure? what principle is being upheld? that’s not the same as “justifying” it – you can’t be “justifying” it if you end up effectively prohibiting it, which was the actual effect – but then again, you wouldn’t know that if you didn’t know the proper context for Torah, which is as the written component of jewish law, not as a copy of “gender relations for dummies”, which is how it is so often abused by literalist protestants and bible-bashers in particular.

“I doubt that a person starts reading scriptures and then concludes ‘Well whaddaya know? Stoning women is immoral!’”

i agree – and so do the sages! although there are more morally complex issues in the Torah than this one.

amy is also good enough to address a criticism i make of her that she is generalising about religious people:

“Sure, not all religious people follow their religion in exactly the same way, but they do believe in a god/gods, and their holy texts do mean something to them. These are the two aspects of religion that I critique in my piece, and they appear to me to be pretty universal among the faithful. The rest is a critique of the arguments used by religious feminists to defend the misogyny in their holy texts, and examples of religiously-inspired misogyny. What is it that I’m generalising about? What is it exactly that you object to?”

well, i suppose what i object to is the implication that religious feminists are “defending misogyny”, because as i have attempted to show, i don’t think the misogyny is there either in intent or in application – except by people who really don’t understand either the text concerned, or who don’t follow an acceptable standard of textual interpretation. i accept that it *could* result in misogyny, because it *has* – but human beings do get things wrong from time to time and Torah is not easy.

anyway, i hope this is not too irrelevant and that there are enough interesting nuggets here for the conversation to continue here; certainly i would encourage people to take a look at the original piece.

a woman causing an earthquake yesterday by blatantly showing her elbows and knees

well, i expect most of us have probably heard by now that, according to the not-at-all-bonkers iranian regime, that immodestly dressed women cause earthquakes. i expect the haitians are buying their chadors as we speak. in the interests of balance, i thought it might be instructive to see which other religious figures are saying and doing stupidly daft things this week:

1. mobile phones damage your neshama

we are reliably informed that the son of the vishnitzer rebbe, a prominent hasidic sect (that’s vishnitz, not the rebbe himself, he can’t be a sect on his ownsome) doesn’t want yeshiva students to carry mobile phones, because they can damage the neshama which, in jewish mystical thought, is one of the higher and more holy parts of the soul. i should, in fairness, point out that the damage is indirect not direct, as the mobile phone *might* be able to access the internet which *might* lead to someone looking at porn. or the student might start texting girls, or looking at them, or talking to them, or something like that. anyway, i do feel i should mention that vishnitzer women don’t in fact shave their heads under their wigs, so there are untold sensual delights on the horizon once the students leave yeshiva and head for the wedding canopy, so presumably married students can be trusted to carry phones. nonetheless, this is not the only danger out there, as the rabbi went on to say; there is an even more terrifying danger to the haredi world – the haredi newspaper.

2. haredim forbidden to read haredi newspapers

yes, you heard right; the ultra-orthodox vishnitzer hasidim have been banned from reading the ultra-orthodox newspaper, hamodia. for those of you who are unfamiliar with it, it’s slightly right of genghis khan and the only pictures allowed, if they’re of human beings at all, are something like this:

dangerous images of debauchery

 anyway, it’s not allowed. as hamodia itself declares:

“ALL Haredi Jews, by virtue of their faithful commitment to lead a wholesome spiritual life, free of the gratuitous violence and nudity so prevalent in today’s media, will neither own a television set, nor have internet access or radio in their homes.”

so, are the vishnitzers worried that pictures of the latest gedolim get-together might cause a ruckus? no, it’s because newspapers might, y’know, actually inform them about, y’know, stuff that, y’know, the rabbis might not actually want them to hear…. like reports of rabbinic corruption, for example, sorry, putting them at risk of falling foul of Torah prohibitions on tale-bearing and slander. i am sure mr justice eady would approve!

3. discriminating against christians will cause civil unrest in the UK

everyone’s favourite evangelist ex-archbishop, george carey, in a letter to the employment appeals tribunal objecting to a nurse rather stupidly being forced to take off her christian jewellery, threatened that:

“The fact that senior clerics of the Church of England and other faiths feel compelled to intervene directly in judicial decisions and cases is illuminative of a future civil unrest.”

yes, you heard right – christianity is under attack, apparently. ruth gledhill disagrees, pointing out that if you want to look for somewhere where christians are actually being persecuted, there are plenty of places, but i think predicting bedlam in bristol and uproar in uttoxeter is probably a bit on the alarmist side.

4. spate of hindu beheadings anticipated

apparently a headless body found at a temple of the hindu goddess kali was ritually decapitated and intended as a sacrifice. as loony religious behaviour goes, this one is hard to beat, but i look forward to john denham putting a well-funded programme to prevent human sacrifice by engaging with bemused community leaders from neasden. or something.

5. deepak chopra takes blame for american earthquake

my favourite right now – apparently, it isn’t immodestly dressed women, but fatuous, over-indulged, stupidly rich new-age gurus that cause earthquakes. followers of deepak chopra on twitter would have seen the following:

“Had a powerful meditation just now – caused an earthquake in Southern California. Was meditating on Shiva mantra & earth began to shake. Sorry about that.”

oh deary, deary, deary me.

“A pope with no moral authority simply cannot function as a pope. Yes, he has ecclesiastical power. But ecclesiastical power without moral authority merely exposes the hollowness of an unaccountable, self-perpetuating clerisy. Does he think we don’t know? Does he understand that any parent of any child will be unable to imagine themselves in the same moral universe as this man?”

and some of them are even sort-of-default-catholics for whom this is the final straw:

“I could hardly be described as a good, or even decent, Catholic, but I’d managed to hang on in there, in the vaguest way imaginable.  Vague because it’s hard to pay lip-service to a faith that you feel hates you; a faith that would rather let you die in childbirth than have an abortion, won’t let you take the contraception necessary to prevent said abortion, hates gay people despite having many homosexual priests; a faith that talks ignorant nonsense about HIV and Aids, that would rather watch people die in Africa than let them use a condom; a faith that is unbelievably slow to say sorry about the fact that some of its members are habitual rapists of children.

I mean, you know, at some point you just give up. Not one of these things is defensible taken individually. Collectively, they are beyond comprehension.”

faith central has a bunch more, thanks to the always-charming ruth gledhill.

and now, of course the pope’s opposite number in the atheist world, the ever-reliable richard dawkins and his fellow diatribalist christopher hitchens (the man who, i was appalled to discover, repeated the “hole in the sheet” legend as fact in his anti-religious tract “G!D Is not great” without doing basic research) have volunteered to “do a pinochet” on big bad benny before his lips touch the tarmac at heathrow.

"science be praised!"

now, i have to admit that part of me admires them for having the stones to try and, frankly, i’d rather not foot the tax bill for his security. however, it is only fair to point out, as indeed does libby purves at the times, that:

“We know that even if the Vatican had never done anything legally dubious or morally wrong, Hitch and Dawk would still hate it.”

although on balance, i think i agree with her that this needs airing and dealing with properly if the church is not to avoid a fatal collapse in its already critically compromised moral authority. aside from the pre-vatican 2 accusations of deicide and more than a thousand years of clerical jew-hatred (oops, i’m not sure we’re done with that), i have, i think, a fairly relaxed attitude to catholicism and a great admiration for my many friends who seek to remain within its communion, even if i always thought the theology was a bit on the prudey-square side and have never, ever seen eye-to-eye with celibacy.

i’m actually not sure if it’s the general or the specific that worries me; i always admired peter tatchell when he tried this kind of stunt, but that’s peter tatchell, he’s a principled sort of bloke. it’s just that i could envisage dawkins and hitchens trying exactly the same thing on, say, an israeli chief rabbi or the sheikh of al-azhar; it’s all the same to them, of course, but if they were to get this to fly, you could see exactly what would happen with every single-issue campaigner/gadfly/wingnut: the same thing that happened with tzipi livni. we are, after all, talking about a mentality that will try any stunt, no matter how stupid, counterproductive and unhelpful, that gets them into the paper.

i suppose south park are right:

Dawkins knew that logic and reason were the way of the future. But it wasn’t until he met his beautiful wife that he learned using logic and reason isn’t enough. You have to be a dick to everyone who doesn’t think like you.

****

The Vatican: Nazis yesterday, victims of "antisemtic" hatred today

Citing “an Irish friend,” the Archbishop of Canterbury, whom we might call the Anglican Pope, slagged off the Catholic Church for its handling of pedophile-priest scandals. But before we’d figured out what His Grace was saying, exactly, along comes Father Raniero Cantalamessa, pastor to Auld Red Socks himself in Rome, and he cites “a Jewish friend” to invoke antisemitism as a sort of allegory to the growing rage against the Catholic Church.

I will cite my imaginary Zoroastrian friend in order to assert my claim that both these geezers should just administer the sacraments, visit the sick, bury the dead, and shut their big yappers. If they and all the rest of that class that wears its collars backwards had been attending solely to those minor obligations of their trade all these years, we all would have had a great deal less misery.

Archbishop Rowan Williams appears to have only now discovered that the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland has a slight difficulty in the reputation department, “suddenly becoming, suddenly losing all credibility – that’s not just a problem for the Church, it is a problem for everybody in Ireland.” He might have had a point there somewhere except that the Catholic Church has been squandering its credibility among the Catholic Irish for some generations now, and this is hardly a “problem” for Ireland. It’s been positively liberating.

Father Cantalamessa’s astonishing discovery is that sometimes Passover and Easter fall during the same week. This gives him the notion that his Easter homily might allow a disingenuous comparison between antisemitism as collective punishment (for what crime he does specify) and the transfer of personal responsibility for child-molesting to the pope and the church itself. Or something. Cantalamessa is a smart guy. If you die and and go to heaven and years later your widow and the guy she ended up marrying eventually show up, Cantalamessa can explain who’s legitimately married to whom.

Anyway, say that in the spirit of the Easter-Passover thing Cantalamessa had wanted to make the point that Rome’s indifference and complicity in the abuse of countless Catholic victims by predatory priests owes its origins to the same institutional pathology at work in Rome’s historical indifference and complicity in the sufferings of the Jews. He might have had an arguable if unnecessary indictment to propose. But that would have invited the unpleasant inference that his bishops were like Nazis or something. Which would have been embarrassing.

But nevermind. My imaginary Zoroastrian friend just interrupted me to say we’re all getting it completely wrong. To assert his claim, he cites his “former Living Marxism correspondent friend” Brendan O’Neill, who says Catholic-bashing is the thing to keep your eye on and illiberalism, scaremongering and elitism are behind it. I think this means that Brendan would want to have Father Cantalamessa’s cake and eat it at Archbishop Williams’ table.

I miss Noreen. She can properly interrogate touchy ecumenical subjects. True, she flirts with a view of certain Old Testament events that might be considered slightly schismatic, but still.

1. transparency at the jewish leadership council

ok, we know who the board of deputies are. we know what it’s for. we know how it’s funded. we know how you get to be on it. we know who it represents. now, we have this new organisation called the “jewish leadership council”. on it, you have various movers and shakers, you’ve got the vc/banking/property tycoons, you’ve got the charity/safety/israel activists, you’ve got synagogue movement machers, you’ve got access, you’ve got international connections, you’ve got lords, baronesses, knights and the chair of ujs – you’ve got two women and no rabbis, for some reason. you’ve got no haredim, for some other reason. you’ve got leaders from the most broad-based and influential organisations in the community – but what are they for? clearly, this is an influential bunch of people, but who chooses them? who decided that there should be a jewish leadership council in the first place? how are they accountable? what is their strategy? what is their relationship with the board? how is it funded? i for one would like to know.

2. promote jewish (especially sephardic) cultural literacy

we are not short, for good or ill, of jewish education organisations, from the controversial chabad to the inestimable limmud and all points beyond. however, for the most part, systematic approaches aimed at enhancing jewish identity are without exception entirely religious-based. more worryingly, they seem to be ignoring the question of cultural literacy. whilst there are instances of successful specific initiatives, like the yiddish summer school run by the jewish music institute, or the various ulpanim run by israel-focused organisations, there is a distinct lack of provision for the sephardic and oriental communities to promote the learning of ladino and judeo-arabic – essentially, globalisation is being driven by majority tastes, hence the largest groups attract the most funding and if one didn’t learn it at one’s mother’s knee, one might struggle to gain familiarity with anything from cookery to piyyutim, history to dress. there are organisations, including musical groups and individual tutors, who are promoting and disseminating the results of their knowledge and expertise in specific areas, normally as a result of academic research, but there is no-one who can teach you about the culture of, say, an “indian iraqi”, everything from how to make sambusak and sehug to singing shbahoth pronounced correctly – in other words, the customs, the language, the music, the food, the history. and the same goes for the different ashkenazi traditions, with the possible exception of chabad, who integrate their cultural traditions such as “farbrengen” as part of their outreach programmes. it is possible that this may be the result of a hundred years of zionist shelilat ha-galut (“negation of diaspora behaviours”) or an enlightenment/modernist hangover against the backward ways of “ghetto culture”, or simply the influence of organisations whose sole concern is increasing religious observance, but surely one can no longer argue that diaspora jewish is simply something to be outgrown. yet we have thrown the baby out with the bathwater on this one – and forgotten much of what made being jewish interesting. this is something i believe where we can learn something from how other diasporas have preserved their cultures, the various south asian communities being a case in point.

3. take a lead on environmental frumness

something was said about making Shabbat the “greenest day of the week” – now, i am the first to expound on the benefits of one day with no driving, tv or communications, but i worry about the effects on the planet of copious use of tinfoil, urns, hot-plates, leaving lights on and most of all the use of disposable plates, cutlery, glasses and so on for ease of clear-up at synagogue kiddushim or on other communal occasions. i was less than underwhelmed at chiefy’s “green shabbat” damp squib and am regularly appalled at the environmental disaster area that most community functions seem to be. there is an opportunity for the community to change this – it is 100% wrong that correct religious observance should be in breach of Torah prohibitions on wastefulness and the destruction of natural resources. i would be delighted if religious organisations could take a lead in this department – the progressive movements have already made steps in this direction and organisations like limmud have made concrete moves to make policy into reality on its conferences. there are organisations such as hazon that are focused specifically on doing this in a jewish way – it is about time that the religious establishment, particularly within the traditional communities, does the same. a set of guidelines would be a start.

4. break the stranglehold of fiftysomething personal fiefdoms

i lose count at the number of community organisations in this country whose leadership and patronage is controlled by middle-aged people who run them as if they were their own personal kingdoms. sometimes, these people have some claim to expertise, or have built the organisations up, but more often than not, they have simply prevented the organisations from developing by hanging on to all the levers of power, dispensing patronage with the help of compliant boards of part-time trustees, picked for their names, contact books, relations and fat wallets. how many of these organisations have executive scrutiny from anyone under 35, let alone under 30? how many of these boards provide an effective check on the power of the chief executive or director? more worryingly, what happens when an organisation which has no competition begins to stifle innovation in its key area of focus and actively prevent other organisations challenging its dominance, or even block activities in its area which are not under its control? i propose that all community organisations adopt a code of practice which includes a commitment to the future planning of the organisation, specifically to succession planning and provides for some kind of non-executive checks and balances. not being an expert in charity law, i’m not sure what the actual rules are, but enough charity scandals have made it into the papers (and i know of some which haven’t even got that far) to suggest that there is something to address here, perhaps through the board?

5. shul and mosque twinning

although there are a plethora of opportunities for the ceremonial activities associated with interfaith dialogue (i’m thinking here of the likes of the indefatigable and admirable sir sigmund sternberg) and quite a few effective practical collaborations amongst communal professionals and academics (i’m thinking here of the leo baeck college jewish-christian-muslim conferences in germany and the tireless liaison work done by the cst) there are still far too few grass-roots initiatives (here, i’m thinking of the likes of radio salaam-shalom or the alif-aleph student dialogue activities) in the mainstream synagogue movements. i would propose a simple solution – a programme of twinning between synagogues and mosques, perhaps trilaterally including churches if it helps. by the same token, i think jewish-sikh dialogue has long been neglected and, particularly in view of our similarities as religions with a partly ethnic element, it would be extremely helpful to bring gurdwaras into the mix. a programme of working together on uncontroversial and useful community projects such as litter collection or redecorating local facilities would enable the building of links which would contribute strongly to community cohesion.

6. transparency in the tzedakah industry

every day, hundreds of thousands, if not millions of pounds are donated by religious jews to the needy. the giving of “tzedakah” (not exactly the same thing as charity) is a religious obligation that is taken extremely seriously by both observant and non-observant jews. however, this system lacks transparency. every traditional morning service includes a point at which money is ceremonially donated, usually into a collection box. usually this money is given as coins or even notes, but there are a number of schemes, widely used in the strictly orthodox community, whereby tzedakah vouchers are purchased en masse, donated by the purchasers and then redeemed by the recipients. however, these cashflows, which are then collected and redistributed by either communal officials or charitable networks, undeniably place significant amounts of patronage in the hands of synagogues, rabbis and charities. there is little transparency about these donations, how they are used or what strings may or may not be attached.

on the other side of the transaction, a huge industry has built up around getting money donated for tzedakah to “the needy” or “for Torah study” – however, a sizeable (though who knows how much?) amount is directed towards ultra-orthodox institutions both here and in israel. similarly, the communities for whom “Torah is their profession” (in other words, they don’t work for a living, but live off these donations whilst studying full-time) are disproportionately benefited. i’m not saying they live in the lap of luxury, but they certainly have a lot of children, don’t pay a lot of tax (or, in israel, serve in the army) and don’t seem to pay much attention to the talmudic maxim, which is part of the normative halakhah of the shulhan arukh, that “he who does not teach his son a trade, teaches him to be a thief” (BT qiddushin 29a). moreover, if you spend any time in the strictly orthodox community, you will become aware of the number of people who come asking directly for money from the community during prayers, in most cases waving a laminated note under your nose about the operation they need to pay for, the medication they need to take, the institution of Torah learning that they are supporting or even the wedding they need to make for one of their 12 children. all of them seem to be able to afford plane tickets and most of them seem to think if you are collecting in the UK, you have no obligation to ask in english or provide any kind of english explanation of what you’re asking for, which is just plain rude.

now, i don’t deny that some of these are worthy causes, but some of them definitely aren’t. the money isn’t audited at either end. the tax authorities certainly aren’t consulted. money often goes missing, is diverted, is used to gain undue influence or ends up funding things of which i certainly do not approve (like illegal settlements) and we are all aware of the recent scandals in america over money-laundering. there is a secondary industry (well known in stamford hill) whereby you can hire a driver for a couple of days who has a list of addresses where people live who give to good causes live and the amount they are likely to give and he will shuttle you round from door to door in return for a cut. one person of my acquaintance used to keep a wodge of five pound notes by the door for when anyone rang – and, apparently, a lot of them complained about how little he gave! now it is all very praiseworthy that the jewish obligation for charitable giving is so powerful, but it is currently driving a lot of very, very questionable behaviours and practices.

the authorities have long been interested in the hawala system by which muslims raise money for good (and some not so good) causes and a focus on this is part of most anti-money-laundering computer systems. it is only a matter of time before the tzedakah system comes under scrutiny as a racketeering practice. in fact, it probably already is. my advice, particularly to the strictly-orthodox communities is this: clean house. do something about the lack of transparency. get audit trails and control systems in place – or you will live to regret it when this augean stable is eventually cleaned. there is an opportunity for, among other things, a cashless system to be introduced whereby people seeking donations can be issued a portable card reading device. similarly, if we can issue hechshers (stamps of kashrut) for food, there is no reason why we cannot do the same at the UK end for reputable collectors of funds – that way, we who wish to fulfil our obligation to donate can be assured that our funds are going to someone or a cause who really deserves it and not to anywhere else.

7. call the kiruv industry to account and combat the influence of artscroll

regular readers of the spittoon will be aware of my opinions on the kiruv or “outreach” industry and the organisations that are engaged in it. many of these organisations worry me. not because i object to bagels and speed-dating, but because i object to the hidden agendas of these organisations and the power they are increasingly gaining within the communal mainstream. at least one major united synagogue has outsourced its jewish education to a kiruv organisation in the past, which has been a source of some controversy. the ideology that drives these people comes straight from the haredi world. that is not to say that it is necessarily such a bad thing, but it’s simply not healthy that it is allowed to infiltrate and take over the mainstream of jewish education. the stalking-horse of this entryism is the powerful “mesorah publications” publishing house, home of the artscroll series of books. now i don’t know of one jewish house that doesn’t have at least one of their books, including mine, but i for one worry about allowing the hashkafah (“worldview”) of this part of the community to become dominant. both artscroll and the kiruv movements push a monolithic, heavily edited, selective, prudish, intolerant and above all doctrinaire view of judaism which flies in the face both of our history and the jaw-dropping complexity of jewish thought, theology, law and culture. people like simplicity and for things to be set out for them to understand – that’s fine. but what goes with this, both in the publications and the programmes, is an ideology – and it’s not an ideology that we should be comfortable or complacent about. the traditionalist mainstream has been supine in the face of this onslaught, in many cases sympathising with its negation of non-orthodox communities and streams of thought and, in many cases, actively encouraged by the power players in the religious leadership. it is time we fully understood what these organisations stand for, what their political aims are, what links they have to israeli political parties on the [ultra]religious right and what influence they have over the community in this country. they have been able to buy silence so far with what is in many places entirely praiseworthy community work, but it is time we had some transparent scrutiny of these organisations.

all suggestions are welcome!

outside the serene environment of the museum, however, the dispute between the self-appointed guardians of faith and reason continues to rage. professor richard dawkins, the napoleon of socio-biology, recently devoted an entire episode of his hagiographic (but mostly excellent) series on darwinism, “the genius of charles darwin”, to rubbishing religion, as usual choosing its most rabid, swivel-eyed partisans, leavened with a selection of double-tongued “intelligent design”-peddling weasels to make his point about the idiocy and irrationality of belief. the sole exception to this parade of lunacy appeared to be the archbishop of canterbury, whose lyrical, articulate moderation was immediately dismissed by dawkins as yet another creationist strategy, this time the stealth doctrine of “absorption”. to this way of thinking, even the honour accorded to darwin by burying him in westminster abbey was suspect.

it is notable that those who find evolution unpalatable are similarly splenetic, even if they fail to match dawkins’ magisterial contempt in either grammar or coherence. but however less militant in tone than his ferocious assault on religion, the god delusion, “the genius of charles darwin” still left the indelible impression of an agenda that believes there can be no genuine meeting ground between empirical, peer-reviewed truth and obscurantist, infantile fantasy. religion, in dawkins’ view, quite simply cannot be taken seriously as a choice for anyone who considers themselves intellectually sound or critically robust. it is a vestigial remnant, a reminder of the dark era before scientific knowledge was available, a sentimental, regressive attachment – and it must be discredited, debunked and unmasked for the toxic, anti-reason fallacy that it is.

this is, of course, not the first time that religion has been attacked in these terms. the european “enlightenment” was founded upon a profound hostility to religion as an obstacle to progress, judaism in particular. much of enlightenment criticism of judaism could also be characterised as a new version of christian supercessionism, this time using reason and science to prove that christianity was more “modern” and “progressive” than its “backwards”, “primitive”, “uncivilised” predecessor. naturally, some thinkers went far further than this, rejecting any and all religion in favour of a new faith in reason, science, progress, class, nation or race. for judaism, however, the hostility remained constant; whether the aim was to convert or debunk. and, ultimately, even for those who abandoned traditional belief or any kind of belief, a new form of hostility, based on a vicious distortion of science itself, was able to make even having jewish ancestors a crime punishable by extermination.

pseudo-scientific racism offered judaism no opportunity to defend itself but, fortunately, science and reason seem unlikely to lead to a new holocaust. but existential issues notwithstanding, the militancy of science-inspired hostility to religion seems to have adopted a recognisable posture and set of tactics. they appear to be strikingly similar to those of the famous mediaeval spanish “disputations”, in which judaism, represented by such luminaries as nachmanides, found itself called to account before the kangaroo courts of the catholic church and the inquisition.

i do not seek to defend all religion against assaults when it seems manifestly obvious that some are well-deserved and many criticisms can be shown to have excellent foundation; in particular, the accusation that religion has often shown itself as all too ready to excuse injustice, immorality, inhumanity and the abuse of power, whether as a social influence or a political force. the prophet jeremiah speaks of the dichotomy between a “heart of stone” and a “heart of flesh”. we must be unarguably able to lay claim to a voice of righteousness and truth, or we will be unable to respond, as we should in no uncertain terms:

our religion is not as you say it is. you are misrepresenting what we say, misrepresenting what we do and misrepresenting our mission in the world. you are either ignorant of what we actually believe, or you are guilty of the same lack of critical engagement that you believe religion exhibits where darwinism is concerned and violating your own principle of empirical investigation. we have no problem with science, especially darwinism; it undoubtedly has some important things to teach us about ourselves and the universe. but we are not interested in a war between religion and science. more to the point, we will take responsibility for our own benefit to society and will not have our terms of engagement dictated to us by you. they should be dictated by our respect for the sources within judaism that enable us to articulate that benefit:

“when i behold your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars which you established; what is man, that you are mindful of him and the son of man, that you think of him?”  psalms 8:6-7

“if a man is worthy, they say to him: ‘you preceded the angels’; but if he is unworthy, they say to him: ‘a gnat preceded you, a snail preceded you’” genesis rabbah 8:1

“man has no pre-eminence over the animals, for all is breath” ecclesiastes 3:19

 there are often surprising sources of religious authority for such interpretations. one such is the towering figure of “the rav”, rabbi j.b. soloveitchik, who asks in response:

 “in truth, what is man when set against the vast universe and the heavenly realms? what is his worth in comparison to the cosmic process? what is he when set against the world and the fullness thereof? what is he in relation to worlds, visible and invisible?” ‘halakhic man’, p.169

 soloveitchik understands us as being reconciled by understanding G!D’s Recognition of us as “worthy to stand before G!D”. i do not think it unreasonable to suggest that the purpose of religion is to make us worthy of that divine recognition – and where we are not, we cannot expect protestations of moral superiority to hold water.

scary kiruv cartoon

on reading it, i didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. on one hand, it’s a caricature of the position of the kiruv (“outreach”) organisations, but on the other hand, once you start digging into their theology, their internal politics, their fundraising activities and their influence on the jewish community and israeli politics, it’s hard not to find them scary.

i’ve been thinking about this for a good long time, because as an observant jew, albeit one who was became observant as an adult, i am constantly aware of the phenomenon of the ba’al teshuvah, the “penitent”, the returner-to-traditional-judaism. when you’re trying to do this, the kiruv organisations are the first to stand up and say they’ll help. however, i never took them up on their offers, because i could see where it led and i had seen its effect on friends and family when conflict arose. i won’t say that i’ve never met fantastic rabbis from chabad, project seed, aish or the jewish learning exchange – but i was always aware of the kiruv undercurrent and kept my involvement at arm’s length. it would appear, however, that not everyone is in possession of the requisite confidence and critical faculties to counter the half-truths, mendacious reasoning, tendentious interpretation and evangelistic love-bombing; people want their outer message of family values, Torah and a truly integrated lifestyle to be true – and so it is.  and, yes, of course these people are often more amusing than scary:

Lubavitch Sends T-800 Back in Time to Protect Holy Temple (thanks, the Knish)

but that’s not all it is.

what i truly find sinister about these organisations is their monolithic nature. like all fundamentalisms, they take a mythologised golden age (which may or may not have happened) and posit a fall from that state, which can only be regained by a return to the actions, behaviours and values espoused by the organisations which claim to represent the legacy of that golden age. whether this is an idealised picture of the yeshivas of lithuania, the shtetls of poland, or indeed the era of the prophets, patriarchs and classical rabbinic sages. if only we all attained that standard, they claim, it would all be different – the world would be transformed and us with it.

well, the world would be transformed all right, but something vital would be lost – and that is the vitality of religious biodiversity. there has always, *always*, *always* been variation in both belief and practice, there has *never* been a time in which we all did exactly the same thing and observed a uniform code of dress, behaviour, ritual and belief. maimonides’ “13 principles of faith” divided the community for a century. the hasidim and mitnagdim fought like cats and dogs (and continue to do so) – the accommodators of modernism and the NAY-SORRENDUR vanguard, the rationalists and mystics, the scholars and the businessmen – we’re all necessary just as much as we always have been. what i really, deeply object to is this idea – shared either overtly or covertly by all kiruv organisations, is the concept that we must all dress like this:

and spend all our time doing this:

hevruta study in a yeshiva

and everyone else should just be happy to pay for us to do this, because after all – we’re doing the world a favour by sitting and studying Torah all day. now, actually, i don’t entirely disagree that studying Torah a lot is a good thing for the world, but i also note that the sages expected us to Get A Job and Pay Our Taxes as well. rashi had a job. rabbi akiva had a job. maimonides had three jobs. now, suddenly, we’re expected to all wear the black-hat uniform and aspire to a life of Torah study?

i’m sorry, it’s never been like that and, hopefully, it’ll never be like that. but of course, we must remember what the consequences of not being like that are, in the view of the people in the ultra-orthodox world who fund the kiruv organisations. i was not entirely surprised, of course, to find that these cartoons are supposed to have caused the haitian earthquake – that’s right, because G!D Is bound to kill thousands of people in the caribbean just to get the jewish community’s attention.

this sort of thing is a wake-up call. these people are not the future of judaism – they are our wahhabis, generous, well-funded, well-organised and intelligently marketed – and puritanical, intolerant and disingenuous. just as we outsourced islamic education to the saudi international dawah programme a generation ago and are now reaping the dubious benefits, we are in the process of handing these people the future of jewish education. we should take ownership of our own Torah back before it’s too late.

in such an environment, it’s extremely helpful to be able to point to people who can stand up and say in no uncertain terms: this isn’t right. excusing it is even worse. as it says in the Mishnah: where there are no men, at least you should try and act like a man. i am encouraged to see at least some orthodox rabbis swimming against the tide of denial although, of course, not that surprised to see the perennial awkward squad-nik and contrarian (and my own much revered teacher) rabbi jeremy rosen, writing in haaretz:

“I am tired of making excuses. Once I would argue that 2,000 years of oppression, hatred and exclusion had taught the Jews to do whatever they needed to survive. Or, I would note that much of Orthodox Jewry nowadays is barely a generation removed from life in an Eastern Europe where the state was an enemy and everyone had to break the rules in order to evade the discriminatory regimes. In Israel, one could put the blame on David Ben-Gurion, for not having separated religion and state, which in effect encouraged the Orthodox to indulge in all the temptations that accompany political power.
 
But as with attempts to rationalize terrorism, you go through the obvious list of justifications – poverty, alienation, discrimination – and then you find perpetrators who have suffered none of the above. Daily, we Orthodox repeat mantras about justice, charity and kindness in our prayers, and the more we seem to spout them, the less many of us seem to pay any attention to translating the words into actions.”

you can read the rest of the article here, but i think it’s worth pointing at this particular point:

“Wherever you have a self-perpetuating oligarchy, its members come to see themselves as above the law. Just as a regime of men usually discriminates against women. This is why the unfair laws of divorce in Judaism have still not been modified to remove the disgrace of male chauvinists who can blackmail their wives over a get. When a majority of rabbis turn a blind eye, claiming they can do nothing, they are really encouraging the process of coercion, providing easy outs to the men while refusing to budge for the women. Add to that the superstition factor – and a tendency to attribute superhuman powers to certain rabbis, so that many then fear crossing them – and you have additional opportunities for corruption.”

i think there’s probably a lesson there that the catholic church has been learning – hard – recently. with that said, i was astounded to see this article in this week’s jc (now it’s been retrieved from pro-palestinian hackers) written by two of the most forward-thinking of the rabbis of the united synagogue in connection with the jfs admissions fiasco:

“What is required, therefore, is work for a change in the law that will put the determination of Jewish identity back where it belongs — in the hands of the Jewish community. Since there is no prospect of a change in the law without broad consensus across the Jewish community in favour of change, this involves all the denominations working together. This, in turn, requires realism and a willingness to compromise on the part of the Orthodox community.”

yes, you heard right: orthodox rabbis realising they have to be realistic, compromise and work with non-orthodox rabbis and proposing détente.

good G!D. i sincerely hope this is the thin end of the wedge – it is genuinely astounding to see something so overtly challenging to the “NO SORRENDOR!!” paisleyist orthodox establishment stated so clearly, succinctly and without ambiguity.

the two rabbis concerned, naftali brawer and michael harris, have long been known as pragmatic, open-minded, individuals. let’s hope it doesn’t stand in the way of their further advancement.

****

Guru Nanak Dev

In today’s times there is much debate about extremism and religious intolerance. Terrorist acts committed in the name of religion and religious intolerance seems to be on the rise. In these uncertain times we can all learn lessons from the teachings of Baba Guru Nanak.

Baba Guru Nanak was born in India to a Hindu family in the 15th century. From a young age, he had both Hindu and Muslim friends. This helped him to gain a good understanding of Hinduism and Islam. Throughout his life he was accompanied everywhere by two close friends, one was a Muslim and the other a Hindu. He was once asked “who is better a Hindu or a Muslim”? he replied ‘neither, if they don’t do good deeds then they are both in darkness’.

In the Guru’s time India was ruled by the first Mughal Ruler Babur. On one occasion during a military campaign Babur captured Guru Nanak with his companions and imprisoned them. Whilst in prison the guru started speaking about god. He also spoke about equality, tolerance and love for all human beings. This resulted in many prisoners and prison guards revering the Guru and seeking his blessings. The emperor Babur eventually heard about this and went to the prison himself. After listening to the Guru speaking he became tearful and begged for his forgiveness. He had him freed and on the request of the Guru he freed his companions and other prisoners.

Another famous incident in the Guru’s life was when he visited Mecca with his Muslim companion. After having walked from Jeddah to Mecca, the Guru was tired. He lay down to rest with his feet facing the Kaaba and fell asleep. A Muslim teacher who saw the Guru asleep with his feet facing the Kaaba got angry and kicked the Guru to wake him. He then said “How dare you dishonor God’s place by turning your feet towards Him” the Guru then replied “Brother, don’t be angry. I am very tired. I need rest. I respect the House of God as much as anyone. Please turn my feet in the direction where god is not”. The teacher then lifted his feet to turn him to another direction but suddenly realized the wisdom in the Guru’s words, god could be found in every direction. The teacher then started crying and embraced the Guru’s feet, asking for forgiveness.

The Guru also visited Baghdad and stayed there for a while. In Baghdad he continued to spread his message and even had a Gurdwara built there. Disciples of the Guru can still be found in Iraq today.

Despite the atrocities committed by the Muslim Mughal forces, the Guru never once criticized Muslims or the religion of Islam. Rather he criticized the Turks, Mughals and Afghans for not following their religion properly.

The Guru’s message was understood and appreciated by Hindus and Muslims alike and when he was dying both the Hindus and Muslims wanted to give him a burial according to their rites of their faiths. At Guru Nanak’s death, he lay on a hill, and said to his followers:

“I want all Muslims to place their flowers on one side of me. Hindu’s on the other. Whichever flowers are freshest in the morning is the greater religion.”

Everybody became excited about this, to prove that they were better. When everybody gathered in the morning, Nanak’s body had disappeared. However, all the flowers were just as fresh as the others. They were all equal. After that, everyone remembered Nanak’s words:

“Everybody is equal.”

The Guru’s teachings can be a lesson for everyone today.

This year, the month of Muharram falls close to both Christmas and Hanukkah, and at this time, we extend our warmest wishes to the Christian and Jewish communities. As a revered Prophet for Muslims, we also remember that Isa (as) or Jesus dedicated his life to serving his community, and spreading the message of peace and freedom. In Hanukkah we are again inspired towards sacrifice in the face of oppression.

The month of Muharram is one that holds a rich and powerful history for Muslims, and the Muslim Council of Britain marks this month as one that should inspire us towards the search for truth and justice and sacrifice in the way of the communities that we are part of.

Two weeks later, they are advertising the following Event:

Exposing 21st Century Crusade Against Islam

Annual winter conference with lectures delivered by guest speakers; from Arabia; including Shaykh Ali Hasan Al-Halabi; Shaykh Khalid; Al-Anbari; Shaykh Husain Al-Awayishah; Shaykh Bassam Al-Jawabirah.;

Topics to be addressed include:
The Bloody History of Christianity; (From the Crusades to Modern Times);
History of Muslim Tolerance; towards Non-Muslims;
The Shari’ah; Are Muslims in the West Trying to Impose a State within a State?

Venue: Masjid Al-Gurabaa, 116 Bury Park Road, Luton, Beds, LU1 1HE
Everyone is welcome to attend.

Granted this event is organised by the neophyte Salafi zealots from the Al-Gurabaa Mosque in Luton. But how does the MCB justify advertising events like this while at the same preaching to government worthies about the deleterious effects of “Islamophobia”? What, for example, does Muhammad Abdul Bari say in defence of this Seasonal Message (PDF) to the “kufaar” from the Al-Gurabaa Mosque, Luton:

Congratulating the kuffaar on the rituals that belong only to them is haraam by consensus, as is congratulating them on their festivals and fasts by saying ‘A happy festival to you’ or ‘May you enjoy your
festival,’ and so on. If the one who says this has been saved from kufr, it is still forbidden. It is like congratulating someone for prostrating to the cross, or even worse than that. It is as great a sin as congratulating someone for drinking wine, or murdering someone, or having illicit sexual relations, and so on.
…
Whoever does anything of this sort is a sinner, whether he does it out of politeness or to be friendly, or because he is too shy to refuse, or for whatever other reason, because this is hypocrisy in Islaam, and
because it makes the kuffaar feel proud of their religion.

habibi’s update: perhaps the MCB would like to explain why it has published this Green Lane Mosque press release about hate preachers on its website, in toto, without qualification or comment?

As such he has made it clear that when he referred to ‘the Jews’, this reference was not to Jews in general, but to those elements that have shown hostility to Muslims and resorted to violence.

Yeah, right.

A few quotes (pdf) from the Green Lane preachers:

“The oddities of humans and bands of creation that are Jews (may Allah make them ugly) have smeared creation and defaced mankind. The band of the Jews have amassed despicable qualities and vile characteristics of which only one of those qualities would be enough to indicate the sordidness of their cause and the greatness of their malice, so what if all those traits were combined in them?”

- Abdul Aziz As-Sadhan

“We have to be prepared for those enemies [the Jews] and for every enemy of Islam and Muslims and we have to prepare the means of victory and be sincere in our intention to Allah, and we have to return to the religion of Allah and call towards the Sunnah and Tawhid, and if people returned to that the banner of jihad would be lifted to raise the word of Allah and to implement his shariah … and we have to also prepare all the weapons we can and prepare the material and moral means, so when these things are achieved Allah will help us to victory.”

- Faisal al-Jassim

The MCB pushing Green Lane’s pathetic “defence” tells you everything you need to know about the organisation’s real attitude to Jew hatred.

In Egypt, the Coptic Orthodox Christian minority make up some 10% of the population; yet they continue to face hostility and persecution, largely whipped up by the Islamists. Writing in the New York Times, Daniel Williams observes the double-standards of the leaders of the Islamic community in condemning the Swiss referendum on minarets, whilst remaining silent about the continued denial of Egypt’s Coptic Christian minority’s right to worship in peace:

On a side street in the far northeast Cairo suburb of Ain Shams, the door of a five-story former underwear factory is padlocked.

This is, or was supposed to be, the St. Mary and Anba Abraam Coptic Christian Church. The police closed it Nov. 24, 2008, when Muslims rioted against its consecration. Since then local Copts have had to commute to distant churches or worship in hiding at one another’s homes.

While Muslim leaders criticized the Nov. 29 vote in Switzerland that banned construction of minarets, the distinctive spires on mosques that are used for the call to prayer, they don’t support Christians who want to build churches in some Islamic countries. Restrictions in Egypt have exacerbated sectarian violence and discrimination, say Copts, a 2,000-year-old denomination that comprises about 10 percent of the population.

The day after the Swiss vote, Ali Gomaa, one of Egypt’s top Muslim clerics, called the decision “an attempt to insult the feelings of the Muslim community in and outside of Switzerland.”

Copts quickly said that neither he nor any other Islamic leader mentioned the Christian situation in Egypt.

“Without the merest attempt to put our house in order, are we in any position to taunt others to put theirs?” Youssef Sidhom, editor in chief of the Cairo-based Egyptian Coptic weekly newspaper El-Watani, said by telephone. “They should be ashamed.

Read more here

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I think a few more things need to be stated for the record in relation to Rajinder Singh [the Sikh who is supporting the

The venerable Guru Gobind Singh

BNP]. While his reaction is understandable from a “flawed human nature” perspective, considering the apparent loss of his father during Partition, it isn’t justifiable, either from a general moral perspective or indeed from a specifically Sikh perspective. Let me give an example of another Sikh who suffered immense personal tragedy at the hands of Muslims, in some cases explicitly claiming to be acting in the name of Islam.

Guru Gobind Singh, the last human spiritual leader of the Sikhs 300 years ago, lost his father, Guru Tegh Bahadur, when he was only 9 years old. The Mughal administration at the time was attempting to force the Kashmiri Brahmin population to covert to Islam; the latter were on good terms with the Sikhs and therefore asked Guru Tegh Bahadur to help them. The Guru travelled to the Mughal capital of Delhi with a couple of companions in order to intervene on the Kashmiri Brahmins behalf. They were subsequently arrested by members of the Mughal administration; after some discussions with Emperor Aurangzeb, the latter ordered that the Guru should be forcibly converted to Islam. He was kept in a cage, tortured, and since he refused to convert, subsequently executed; he was beheaded in full view of the public in the Chandni Chowk area of what is now called Old Delhi. Due to threats of retribution from soldiers present, ordinary Sikhs who witnessed this couldn’t even openly reclaim the body; later on, a Sikh managed to recover the decapitated body and burned down his own house as a cover to cremate it, and another Sikh rescued the head and took it to Anandpur Sahib in Punjab, where it was formally cremated by the young Guru Gobind Singh (at the time called “Gobind Rai”).

Years later, when the conflicts with the Mughal administration had escalated into all-out warfare, Guru Gobind Singh’s two older teenage sons died on the battlefield. His two younger sons, both less than 10 years old, were captured (along with Guru Gobind Singh’s mother) by Mughal officials in Sirhind, Punjab. The Governor of Sirhind tried to force the two boys to convert to Islam and, when he failed, subsequently had them executed, despite the forceful protests of one of the Muslim noblemen present who desperately tried to intervene on their behalf. Guru Gobind Singh’s mother died of shock soon afterwards. There was also a time when Guru Gobind Singh himself found himself completely cut off from his family and his remaining followers, hunted by the Mughal army, during what was one of the darkest periods of his life.

And yet……Guru Gobind Singh never used any of this as an excuse to attack, demonise, caricature and stereotype Islam as a whole or Muslims en masse. He did not scream vengeance against the entire Muslim population of the Mughal Empire. He did not launch attacks against mosques or Sufi shrines. He did not ban Muslims from entering gurdwaras (Sikh temples). He did not initiate any kind of “voluntary repatriation with a firm incentive” of Muslims from territories governed or dominated by Sikhs. He did not order his followers to dig up and remove the foundation stone of what is now called the Golden Temple in Amritsar, which one of his predecessors had invited a Muslim saint called Mian Mir to lay (Mian Mir was the spiritual instructor of the liberal and cultured Prince Dara Shukoh, son of Emperor Shah Jahan of “Taj Mahal” fame, the latter’s chosen heir, and ultimately murdered by his brother Aurangzeb during the war of sucession). Guru Gobind Singh did not remove the verses originally written by Muslim saints such as Baba Farid which had been incorporated into the Guru Granth Sahib, the holy book of Sikhism and whose final version the Guru was responsible for compiling and editing; he did not remove any of the Islamic names for God which the scriptures contain; he did not add any material attacking ordinary Muslims en masse or denigrating Islam as a whole. He did not support or condone anyone else who was bigotted against Muslims either. He certainly did not promote hatred, prejudice, or the notion of “collective guilt”.

In fact, Guru Gobind Singh actively promoted the notion of desiring the wellbeing and happiness of the entire human race without any kind of distinction or bias regarding people’s individual religious affiliations (or ethnic background, for that matter). He explicitly promoted the teaching that people should “view the whole of humanity as one race”. He was actively assisted by ordinary Muslims trying to save his life when he was completely isolated and being hunted by the Mughal army. He had Muslim officers in his own Khalsa army, including Mughal generals who had defected to his cause in the middle of battles. He explicitly ordered the soldiers in his army not to molest any Muslim women they came across after battles. His entire military and political strategy refrained from attacks on civilians. On the battlefield, he would even use arrows which were mounted with a small amount of gold in order to provide financial assistance to the families of those he killed or, alternatively, to enable the wounded soldier to buy medical assistance if he survived Guru Gobind Singh’s attack.

And after a series of atrocities suffered by the Sikhs, Guru Gobind Singh wrote a lengthy and extremely forceful letter to Aurangzeb condemning him for his hypocrisy and bigotry, but which simultaneously included a list of what the Guru regarded as the emperor’s genuine positive qualities (albeit with the damning caveat “….but true spiritual righteousness is very far from you”), and the promise that the Guru would be happy to meet the Emperor, reconcile with him and “speak some kind words” to him if he would sincerely reconsider his attitude and actions; as confirmed by the authenticated historical records of Aurangzeb’s memoirs and letters to his sons, the Emperor did subsequently experience something of an epiphany and immediately ceased all hostilities with the Sikhs (along with Hindus and other groups he’d been persecuting). Aurangzeb and Guru Gobind Singh were even in the process of formally arranging to meet each other but the aged emperor died before that could occur. And during the subsequent war of succession, Guru Gobind Singh subsequently gave military support to Bahadur Shah I, one of Aurangzeb’s sons and ultimately the next Emperor.

The BNP’s cynical exploitation of Rajinder Singh is unfortunate but not unexpected. However, along with his fellow BNP supporter “Ammo Singh”, he is completely the wrong person to refer to if one wishes to find an example of the true teachings of Sikhism and the correct attitude Sikhs are supposed to have in this matter. If anyone is looking for the latter, they should go right to the source, because Guru Gobind Singh himself suffered far greater personal tragedy throughout his own life than Rajinder Singh did, and by his own example and teachings Guru Gobind Singh obviously embodied a very, very different message to the opportunistic, hate-filled, divisive, sectarian propaganda & agenda the BNP are now trying to promote.

Rabbi Yitzhak Shapiro, who heads the Od Yosef Chai Yeshiva in the Yitzhar settlement, wrote in his book “The King’s Torah” that even babies and children can be killed if they pose a threat to the nation.

Shapiro based the majority of his teachings on passages quoted from the Bible, to which he adds his opinions and beliefs.  “It is permissable to kill the Righteous among Nations even if they are not responsible for the threatening situation,” he wrote, adding: “If we kill a Gentile who has sinned or has violated one of the seven commandments – because we care about the commandments – there is nothing wrong with the murder.”

basically, if this is true, then it’s one of the most disgusting things i have ever heard, a true desecration of the Divine Name.
according to the failedmessiah.com blog, both ginsburgh and possibly shapiro himself are members of chabad, an organisation that, generally speaking, i have a lot of time for because they are prepared to go that extra mile on behalf of jews everywhere and help in ways that others aren’t, but one which i keep at distinctly arm’s length from because, well, to put it bluntly, i am not sure i trust their theology. i wonder if this, after the scandal of the last rebbe’s elevation to messiahship, will finally prove to be the undoing of this behemoth of outreach?

anyway, i’m going to be asking some very pointed questions of any chabad rabbi i encounter any time soon. stuff like this, quite apart from being the sort of thing that laid the groundwork for the murder of yitzhak rabin and presumably provides spiritual sustenance for the likes of jack teitel, undermines the sort of sensible, humane, rational, tolerant and open-minded position that ought to be halakhically mandatory. it is, quite simply, the foundation stone of terrorism.

Why do solid Jews get so insecure around caftans and fur hats?

a frummily-dressed and therefore "proper" jew yesterday

the answer he gives is, in part:

It seems to me to be a mixture of perhaps four things. First, we are all brought up to admire frumkeit. Even wholly non-practising Jews look at Rabbis with respect and – at least until the whinging, preaching, chumras and demands for money become too much – affection. And the Charedim are ritualistically frum, which is actually how we define frumkeit. A man who davens 3 times a day, wears arba kanfot and is careful what he eats – that’s a frum man. A man who always looks after the sick, goes miles to do nachum aveilim and is always there when someone needs support – that’s a mensch. Different.

he adds:

Secondly, we are inculcated into believing that real Jews do not interact with the secular world.

Thirdly, the Charedim are successful in evolutionary terms (now there’s a delicious irony). That is to say that they succeed in breeding more Charedim. That this is done by depriving people of what we regard as modern freedoms and opportunities is, in evolutionary terms, beside the point.

Fourthly, we are not good at providing for ourselves. The MO world should be able to provide its own Rabbonim, shechita, mohellim and so forth but we largely don’t.

my question is – to what extent can the same be said of muslims? i’m no expert and i’ve got nothing against hareidim that have nothing against me (although the car-wash machine the hat was nicked from might not agree) but it seems to me that you guys suffer from much the same thing.

thoughts?

Magid, who grew up in Sudan, said he did not meet someone who was Jewish until after he had moved to the U.S. in his 20s, and he never imagined having such a close relationship with a rabbi. But he said the relationship with the Northern Virginia Hebrew Congregation has affected him and his members. Beyond being tolerant, the synagogue and its members have been welcoming.

He said one member of the mosque told him, “Next time I see a Jewish person I will not look at them the same.”

now *that* is something that a £100k worth of  “preventing violent extremism” money couldn’t buy. you can read the rest of the story here. if only such a thing were possible in this country – but we’re too scared, particularly beyond the “progressive” (i.e. non-orthodox) community.