Calvin the Philosophical Child

A common criticism of the comic strip Calvin and Hobbes is that Calvin is not a plausible six-year-old. There are too many aspects of his character, such as his language and reasoning, that clearly are meant to represent adults. For me, this is not a problem as I do not see Calvin and Hobbes as being about accurately representing childhood (even when it does that better than almost anyone else). I see Calvin as an adult who is depicted as a child in order to explore the childlike nature of adults. Now most explorations of people’s inner childs tend to focus on the positive aspects of childlike thinking such as innocence, or a sense of wonder. Bill Watterson focuses on the dark side of childlike thinking by making Calvin a philosophical child whose worldview is completely ego-centric and founded upon ignorance. This lack of a developed moral sense is made worse by Calvin’s highly developed even adultlike ability to reason. 

In examining Calvin’s thinking, it is useful to consider three different realms of knowledge, facts, morality, and reasoning. Facts are the realm in which Calvin is most obviously a child. He knows little about how the world actually functions and the few facts that he has are riddled with errors. While the particulars of what Calvin knows may mark him as a child, this is not, in itself, a flaw or what marks him as truly a child. All of us are profoundly ignorant about the world and, considering how ignorant we know we are when it comes to things of this world that have credible answers, we must assume that our ignorance only gets worse when it comes to metaphysics. From a divine perspective, the most knowledgeable person on the planet must appear no different than a child like Calvin. Even though Calvin’s ignorance is not, in itself a flaw, it does introduce a legitimate moral flaw in that Calvin’s ignorance is greatly exacerbated by his laziness. 

In terms of morality, Calvin is very much a child in the sense that he is the center of his own universe. He lacks the sense that he is not the most important being in the world. He does not see that he has obligations to those who were here before he was born and to those who will be here long after he is dead. In this sense, he is less obviously a child. Most adults have more information about the world even as they remain moral children. That being said, part of the fun of the character is how unapologetically self-centered he is. He lacks the adult ability to effectively flatter others or to pretend that he cares about them.

Calvin’s self-centeredness can be seen as the foundation for his ignorance. To study means to recognize that one is ignorant. As Calvin is the center of his own universe, he can never acknowledge this. At a practical level, this manifests in his laziness. Paying attention in class or doing homework are literal torture for him as these are tasks that require him to confront his limitations. Better to not do work and continue to bask in one's supremacy. When, inevitably, Calvin gets himself into trouble, he can never acknowledge that the problems in his life might actually be his own fault. Instead, the fault must lie in other people such as his parents, Susie Derkins, or Miss Wormwood, his teacher.

The least childlike aspect of Calvin’s thinking is his ability to reason. Calvin reasons with the full array of tools that we associate with adults. What makes Calvin so interesting, though, is precisely that his sophisticated reasoning does nothing to fix either his ignorance or his self-centered morality. Calvin’s reason only serves his passion to be lazy and not work to lessen his ignorance as well as to flatter himself into believing in his own importance.  

A useful example of the interaction of all three aspects of Calvin’s thinking can be seen in the piece where Calvin asks his father to burn leaves to appease the snow demons.

One might say that Calvin is ignorant to believe that the weather is the product of supernatural beings as opposed to the scientific laws of meteorology. That being said, he is still able to use his reason to construct a narrative of how the world functions on the edifice of his ignorance. He assumes that there are powers out there that affect the weather and he theorizes as to how to best interact with them.

The real problem, as Calvin’s father indicates, is Calvin’s theology. Since Calvin lives in a moral universe that is all about him, his reaction to the existence of higher powers is to construct a magical religion as opposed to an ethical one. The question that Calvin implicitly asks is how does one get a supernatural power like a snow demon to do his bidding. Calvin is not interested in the question of how he can mold his personality to be more in line with that of a supremely perfect being. For Calvin, the supremely perfect being is himself.

Because Calvin has not given himself an education in history or literature which might have given him a wider picture of the world, and lacks the moral imagination to even suspect that such a larger world might exist, he is a slave to momentary pleasures as symbolized by his television set, which he turns into an idol.   

For all of Calvin’s great ability to reason, his rationality, limited by its service to an ignorant self-centered child, ultimately leads him simply to worshipping pleasure and sacrificing his intellect to it.

Calvin’s hope for redemption lies in his stuffed tiger Hobbes. In a sense, Hobbes can be seen as another idol constructed by Calvin. Someone as self-centered as Calvin is incapable of friendship so his solution is to construct a friend for himself according to his own design that he can control. What is interesting about Hobbes is the extent to which Calvin loses control of this relationship. (Perhaps, this is because Hobbes is not simply a figment of Calvin’s imagination.) One thinks of Hobbes tackling him when he opens the front door or his refusal to hate Susie.

Hobbes may be everything that Calvin desires to be, a powerful tiger who is not answerable to parents, teachers, or social conventions. Yet, it is this very wish fulfillment that turns Hobbes against him and stops him from being merely Calvin’s plaything. Furthermore, Hobbes' self-sufficiency makes him rational in a Stoic sense; he does not desire things that he cannot have. Because of that, Hobbes is consistently happy in a way that eludes Calvin. 

This opens Calvin to the possibility that there can be something out there, besides himself, that he should want to imitate. Most importantly, the fact that Calvin can love Hobbes, even though Hobbes acts against him, means that we can truly consider Hobbes to be his friend. With Hobbes, Calvin is given a door through which he might eventually think his way outside of himself.

In keeping with a character named after John Calvin, Calvin is a distinctly Augustinian sort of child. He is trapped by a Satanic love of self that corrupts his reason into digging ever deeper into himself. Calvin is an anti-hero. He is not a good person, but we still like him perhaps because we recognize that his sins are our sins. We are never given a chance to see Calvin grow up. Perhaps, he becomes more like Hobbes, which might lead him to stop being a slave to desiring what he cannot have and instead to love Susie and to try to become the sort of person that she might love in return. But that would be of little interest as a comic strip.  

 

Choosing Meaning: An Alternative Version of Pascal's Wager

 

The philosopher Blaise Pascal (1623-62) famously argued that one should choose to believe in God, despite one's doubts, because there is everything to gain and nothing to lose by making such a wager. If you choose to believe in God and you are right, your reward in heaven is infinite. By contrast, the atheist loses everything if they are wrong. If it turns out that there is no God, the atheist gains nothing for being right as they will be just as dead as the believer who turns out to be wrong. A major problem with this line of reasoning is that it undermines the very notion of belief, turning religion from something one honestly believes into a wager that one makes. If we are going to believe in God then we are going to have to honestly believe in God and not simply in a lottery ticket, a horse, or a meme stock that we buy in the hope that the universe, in all of its randomness, goes our way.  

I would like to suggest an alternative version to Pascal's Wager that maintains some value. Let us step away from the question of whether God exists to offer a heavenly reward and instead ask a different question; does life have any transcendent meaning? Let us also throw in the question, does free will exist? Without free will, we are simply puppets on a string acting out some story. Whether we are central characters in this story or not, we as people, who make choices, cease to matter. To be fair, there are powerful arguments to be made against free will and ultimately against our lives having any meaning. In fact, if I were being truly objective in how I looked at the world, I would have to conclude that most probably free will does not exist and that life is meaningless. I choose to live my life in the belief that my life has meaning and that I have free will, knowing full well that I might be wrong, because, if given a choice, I would rather live my life as if it had meaning and I had free will and be wrong than to not believe in meaning and free will and be right. What is there to gain by not believing in meaning? What is the point of being a Transcendentalist and fashioning my own pretend meaning? I might as well pretend that meaning is real.  

Having taken this leap of faith to accept meaning and free will, I might as well accept that there is a supernatural creator of the entire universe who, through some mysterious process that I am incapable of understanding, allows me to have free will and made the world in such a way that it somehow matters how I make use of the free will. It should be understood that, as we are dealing with an ultimate power to provide meaning, we are dealing with a monotheist God and not simply one of many sources of power that can be tapped into. Clearly, belief in God does not necessitate a belief in free will. I have spent too much time reading Calvinist literature to think otherwise. That being said, I do not see how we can avoid an active belief in God without sinking into the radical materialism of Laplace's demon, rejecting free will and any sense of ultimate meaning.

Belief in God would not have to undermine science. We can embrace science as our primary means of understanding the creator of the natural world. Similarly, my study of history has helped me develop a certain Augustinian sensibility to how I understand human affairs. I am skeptical of human claims to virtue particularly those who achieve positions of power. By extension, I do not expect the creations of those in power, such as countries, to fulfill their stated purpose and not collapse due to the inherent flaws of their designers. And yet there are certain ideas and works of the humble that seem to survive the inevitable collapse of civilization to resurface for a new age. (See G. K. Chesterton's Everlasting Man.) I cannot shake the possibility that there is such a thing as providence. Anyway, I cannot bring myself to worship man so I might as well at least keep an open mind about there being something above mankind.     

Once I assume the God of monotheism in whom I am trusting to provide me with meaning and free will, there seems little point in trying to pursue meaning outside of him. This leaves me a choice. I can try creating my own religion to serve him or I can join a pre-existing monotheistic religion. The advantage of creating my religion is that it is likely to be more rational and avoid the inevitable objectionable features of a religion that evolved through some historic process. Historic religions on the other hand can provide a living tradition to connect to as well as an actual community to interact with. If this religion makes claims about a historical revelation that cannot be dismissed out of hand, all the better. The fact that some things in this tradition might make me uncomfortable and force me to struggle with them might just be for the best. To quote Shepherd Book from Firefly: "You do not fix faith. It fixes you."

Let us agree that I have not provided an argument for God, meaning, or free will; that was never my intention. I choose to take a leap of faith in sanity and live my life on the assumption that there is a God and that my life has a purpose and that he has created me with free will in order to accomplish that purpose. I might be wrong about this but I prefer to believe these things and be wrong than to reject them and be right. If you could convince me, as I am on my deathbed, that God, meaning, and free will had been illusions all along, I will go into the eternal abyss grateful that at least I had the chance to live my life as if these things were true.    

   

Are You an Augustinian or a Rousseauian? Why the Origins of Evil Is Important for Conservatives and Liberals

At the heart of the debate between conservatives and liberals is the question of evil. Both conservatives and liberals may look around and recognize that much of the world is not as it ideally should be but they will disagree as to why this is the case. For a conservative, the source of evil lies in human beings themselves. The liberal will see the source of evil within society. 

The conservative view can best be seen in the thought of Augustine of Hippo, who saw even infants as sinners ruled by self-love. This flaw only becomes even more manifest in older children when they come to suspect that they are not what they should be but, rather than improve themselves, they come to actively hate the good. For example, the child hates learning Greek in school, which requires effort and discipline. His teachers are not content to leave him in his comforting idleness but desire the child's good. Therefore, the child hates them along with anyone else who might attempt to direct him onto a good path. Seeking refuge from the good with its demands, the child eventually comes to actively embrace evil. For example, stealing pears and throwing them away because he knows it is wrong. 

Self-love is so dangerous because it never goes away even when a person honestly tries to be better. The adult who decides to finally focus on his studies and earn a degree will find himself pursuing even greater depravities like becoming an honored teacher of philosophy. With his mastery of being able to talk about ethics, he will finally become truly impervious to anyone questioning his complete lack of virtue. 

In the world of Augustinian psychology, there are essentially two kinds of people, the tragically flawed and the satanically evil. There are the people who try to do what they intellectually know is the right thing even though, in the long run, they are doomed to fail. The other kind of person clings to their claim of righteousness by pretending that their self-love is actually a virtue. Such people are satanic in the sense that they do evil not out of some venial weakness of character but because they actually believe that evil is the true good. 

The solution for the conservative, even if it is a highly imperfect one, is to keep the individual, with his self-love, in check through social organizations. This includes the brute force of the law but more importantly the family and organized religion, which inculcate a person with a moral code and a conscience. This makes it possible for a person to not constantly pursue their self-love even when no one is around and there is no fear of punishment.

This notion of self-love as an inescapable fact of human psychology can also be seen in thinkers like Bernard Mandeville and Adam Smith. There is the hope that, under the right system, self-love can be harnessed for the public benefit. That being said, the starting assumption is that there is no way to remove self-love and create truly selfless people. Even the man who sacrifices his finger to save China will never escape the fact that losing that one finger will cause him greater suffering than the deaths of millions of strangers. 

If Augustine was the paradigmatic conservative, Rousseau can be seen as the paradigmatic liberal. Rousseau rejected Original Sin. People are born fundamentally good because nature is inherently good. It is society that corrupts them. People left to their own devices would be noble savages without a thought of preferring themselves to others. It was only with the invention of private property that people learned to be greedy. Education made people arrogant by causing them to assume that the greater their book learning, the wiser they were when, in truth, greater book learning simply meant less connection to the truths of nature.    

This question about the origin of evil becomes important when we consider the prospect revolution as a solution to the problem of evil. If you are an Augustinian, you are likely to recognize that human beings, with their self-love, will eventually corrupt any set of institutions they are allowed to control. As such, rather than reign in self-love, the institution will come to serve that self-love. Therefore, from time to time certain reforms must be made in order to allow those institutions to resume their job of keeping human self-love in check. What you are not going to consider is tearing institutions down in the hope that better ones will grow in their place. It would be the height of madness to assume that the same people who lack virtue even when they are kept in check will suddenly conquer their self-love once there is nothing left to stop them.  

This is the critical context for understanding Edmund Burke. It may be one thing for British colonists in America to rebel against the Crown in the name of traditional English liberties with the local colony governments remaining largely the same. This is not the same thing as the French deciding to tear down centuries of monarchial tradition because of something some of them read in Rousseau. 

The Rousseauians, like Maxmillian Robespierre, who carried out the French Revolution and eventually the Reign of Terror did not ask themselves who will guard against the revolutionaries. On the contrary, the revolutionary, by the mere fact of being a revolutionary, was assumed to be free from the taint of social corruption. If you believe that society corrupts then struggling against society should protect a person from corruption and make them virtuous. Hence, Robespierre thought of himself as incorruptible. 

From the conservative perspective, the problem with any revolutionary movement comes out of this confidence that self-love can be circumvented. We are self-loving beings who seek to pretend, especially to ourselves, that we are not in order that we should be able to pursue our self-love without being held in check by society or even our own conscience. This renders revolutionaries morally perverse. You are going to take people who are already predisposed to self-love and being deceitful about it. You are then going to allow them to overthrow the very system that keeps their self-love in check, all while telling these revolutionaries that they are above self-love. Is it any wonder that the end results are monsters, who commit mass murder? 

To be clear, Augustinian politics is no guard against corruption. This should come as no surprise as people remain tainted by self-love no matter if they become kings or even popes. On the contrary, the loftier the position the more likely they are to be seduced by their self-love, believing that their self-love is somehow really the selfless caring for humanity. That being said, Augustinian politics, because it does not believe in the perfectibility of human beings, is protected from sinking into the totalitarianism that is the logical endpoint of Rousseauian politics. 

To bring this around to our modern political discourse, if you are an Augustinian, you may honestly believe that racism, as a type of tribalism that ultimately comes from self-love, is an evil that needs to be fought. One might even support laws banning discrimination. What you are not going to do is make any pretense that racism can be eradicated. You are certainly not going to engage in anything so reckless as tearing down social systems in a bid to eliminate "structural racism." You cannot change the reality that people have their thumbs on the moral scales in favor of people they perceive as being more like them. What you can do is to strengthen those social systems that will speak to people's sense of decency and keep self-love in check. 

Ban Circumcision and the Orthodox Will Finally Realize That It was Wrong All Along

I have a friend who is a Yiddishist, an atheist and a hardcore opponent of circumcision. I sent him an article about the attempt in San Francisco to ban the practice and he responded:

It's a good start that hopefully will lead to other bans until it is just illegal everywhere. Really, a consenting adult shouldn't be allowed to get himself circumcised for the same reason we don't just let consenting adults get their legs or ears or any other part cut off. Every part is equally important even though American culture doesn't respect the male genitals. Mentally healthy, un-brainwashed adults don't desire to get pieces of their bodies cut off or mutilated.

...

When circumcision is about to become illegal, there will be a period of angry, hostile opposition from the Orthodox Jewish community. Then they will finally calm down and acquiesce to the fact that it is wrong and it will disappear.


I bring this up not to attack my friend. He may be delusional in his hubris that not only is he right in opposing circumcision, but that it is so obvious he is right that if only Orthodox Jews were to get past their biases and seriously consider his position (say if offered the mental clarity that having a gun pointed at you provides) that they will come to accept this obvious truth, but it is the same hubristic delusion that infects everyone who seeks to use coercive force, such as the government, to advance their own personal values. Some people wish to force people to study creationism; others want to force evolution on the public. Some people want to make sure all speech is "politically correct" and that no one is insulted or demeaned. These arguments are only strengthened in the public mind when used to "protect children."  

What they all have in common with each other and my friend's desire to ban circumcision is the rather odd belief that you can threaten people with violence (and note that all government action involves the threat of violence) and expect people to simply comply. They are not afraid that those coerced will turn around and murder them in their beds. The reason for this is that people like my friend so believe that they are the good guys who want to help others that they cannot conceive that anyone might actually see them as the villains in this story, who are using violence and respond with violence in turn. 

Perhaps I could take such people more seriously if they followed Augustine in his position that, while open coercion in matters of religion was bad for society, it could be useful to see heretics ever so slightly humiliated and denied certain public privileges. This serves to open the minds of the heretic to seriously consider the orthodox position. This view formed the bases of medieval Church "tolerance," particularly as it related to Jews.  

I oppose coercion as a matter of self-interest. I am not so delusional as to believe that I can point a gun and force my values on people and not expect them to slit my throat when my back is turned. The only people I am willing to use coercion against are those people who are already threatening me with physical harm. By definition, in such cases there is no reason to "fear" violence; the violence is already very present and real. I therefore leave it to others to live their lives and raise their children as they see fit. If they wish to baptize them or induct them into any covanants of Abraham, let them. Let them cut off the foreskins of their children. Just as long as they do not point any knives at my privates; I had my circumcision when I was eight days old and I have no desire for a repeat thank you very much.        

St. Augustine Teaches Rabbi Aharon Feldman Authentic Jewish History

I recently decided to spend part of the morning reading through Rabbi Aharon Feldman's The Eye of the Storm: A Calm View of Raging Issues, so brilliantly skewered by Rabbi Aharon Lichtenstein. Part of the book deals with messianism so I had a good excuse. (It is sort of relevant to my dissertation so it counts as work.) Central to Rabbi Feldman's claims is that he offers a Judaism untainted by outside values; he is a believer in "authentic Judaism," so to speak. As such, I believe it is of interest to closely examine some of Rabbi Feldman's "authentic" Jewish beliefs.


In his discussion about messianism, Rabbi Feldman offers the following model of history:


The struggle of human history is the struggle over whether the glory of God or the glory of man will reign supreme. It is the struggle which began when the first man sinned. Adam Ha-Rishon was given the choice between serving God and making his own self "like God, who knows how to choose between good and evil." The choice which faced the first man was: Shall he worship God or shall he worship himself?

It is the struggle which took place between Yaakov and his brother Esav. Yaakov was "a man who sat in the tents [of Torah]," while Esav chose to sell his privilege of serving God in the Beis Hamikdash (the Holy Temple) for a pot of lentils.

The same struggle was replayed was replayed in the wars between Rome and the Jewish people, which ended with the destruction of the Temple. Rome, who the Sages tell us were the descendents of Esav, saw Jerusalem as the antithesis of their world-view. To Rome, man was meant to conquer lands, develop commerce, build highways – in short, to glorify man and his power. For the Jew, man was meant to subordinate his appetites and his passion for conquest to the will of God. With their diametrically divergent world-views, the Romans and the Jews could not inhabit the same world: … "when one stands upright, the other most fall." (Pg. 168-69.)

Now for someone so concerned with offering authentic Jewish beliefs, Rabbi Feldman offers little in the way of sources for this idea so it is up to us to consider where such an understanding of history could come from.

Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik, in his Lonely Man of Faith, famously talked about the struggle between two types of Adam. Adam One is the man of this world who seeks to conquer it; Adam Two is the spiritual man alone in this world, seeking a relationship with God. Rabbi Soloveitchik was attempting to grant some legitimacy to the pursuit of the glory of man in the hope that the two Adams could be reconciled. So we could rest assured that Rabbi Feldman was not influenced by Rabbi Soloveitchik; if anything he is responding to and denouncing such Modern Orthodox views.


The real source for Rabbi Feldman's model of history was that great authentic Jewish thinker, St. Augustine of Hippo. According to Augustine:

… two cities have been formed by two loves: the earthly by the love of self, even to the contempt of God; the heavenly by the love of God, even to the contempt of self. The former, in a word, glories in itself, the latter in the Lord. For the one seeks glory from men; but the greatest glory of the other is God, the witness of conscience. The one lifts up its head in its own glory; the other says to its God, You are my glory, and the lifter up of mine head. In the one, the princes and the nations it subdues are ruled by the love of ruling; in the other, the princes and the subjects serve one another in love, the latter obeying, while the former take thought for all. The one delights in its own strength, represented in the persons of its rulers; the other says to its God, I will love You, O Lord, my strength. And therefore the wise men of the one city, living according to man, have sought for profit to their own bodies or souls, or both, and those who have known God glorified Him not as God, neither were thankful, but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened; professing themselves to be wise,— that is, glorying in their own wisdom, and being possessed by pride—they became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things. For they were either leaders or followers of the people in adoring images, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed forever. (Romans 1:21-25) But in the other city there is no human wisdom, but only godliness, which offers due worship to the true God, and looks for its reward in the society of the saints, of holy angels as well as holy men, that God may be all in all. (1 Corinthians 15:28) (City of God Book XIV Chap. 28)

Thus Rabbi Feldman's understanding of history is about as Jewish as the Incarnation, Trinity, or, dare I say it, women's prayer groups. To be fair to Augustine, his view of the earthly city, as exemplified by the Roman Empire, was more nuanced than he is generally given credit for, much closer to Rabbi Soloveitchik's Adam One. I am interested in how Augustinian ideas of history entered Jewish thought. We see an example of this in the apocalypticism of Rabbi Abraham bar Hiyya, in the early twelfth century, and Isaac Abarbanel, in the fifteenth century, certainly read Augustine. If anyone knows anything about the issue please feel free to comment.

Why Christians Should Accept Me as an American Citizen

Whatever one might say about there being a First Amendment defending the freedom of religion, to be able to enjoy any such rights in practice one is going to have to convince other people to go along with these principles and include you within them. As such one needs to be capable of articulating a case to others.

I stand before the white Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP) establishment of the United States and ask for acceptance. I might not accept Jesus as my personal savior or believe in any Trinity, but I am a Bible-believing monotheist Jew. While I may not be a follower of the Christian religion, I am still culturally very Christian. I have studied Latin, read the New Testament and the works of many Christian thinkers. I even enjoy listening to Christian pop-rock. While my academic work is technically speaking about Judaism, in practice it has largely been an education in Christianity and the different ways in which it has related to Judaism. While I do not deny that there are Christians with Jewish blood on their hands and am not about to ignore a history of some truly horrific things being done to Jews in the name of Christianity, I have a lot of respect for the Christian intellectual tradition. This even applies to people who were genuinely hostile to Jews such as Martin Luther. This is to say nothing of Christians like C. S. Lewis, who is a major influence on how I relate to God, and Augustine, my model for how to live in and even embrace a State not built around my faith. Unlike many Jews, I am not bothered by Christian symbols and images. I do not spit while passing churches. I can look at paintings of the crucifixion and even the Passion film as works of art, without getting caught up in whether Jews are being blamed for killing Jesus. I have even, on occasion, attended church services. My Judaism is one that consciously gives Christianity legitimacy and allows me to be a citizen with Christians. I practice a similar code of morality. I am looking to engage in a heterosexual monogamous relationship. (Not that I am about to butt into the lives of anyone pursuing any alternative relationships in the privacy of their own homes.) I do not use drugs nor do I drink to excess. I am honest in my business dealings with everyone, whether they are Jewish or not. If you are going to accept non-Christians into your country, I am the sort you can hope to deal with.

In addition to my Christian values, I strongly identify with the American narrative. This goes for the Pilgrims, who saw themselves as the new Children of Israel building their godly society in the new "Promised Land," to the American Revolution, a model of moderate force backed by a formal government used to defend liberty. Furthermore, the early United States offered a moderate version of the Enlightenment that was not out for war with religion and even capable of embracing it. It is from this perspective that I confront this country's very real flaws, particularly our history of slavery and racism. For me, following the American Christian abolitionist and civil rights traditions, slavery and racism are what idolatry was for the biblical Nation of Israel; a sin that challenged the very core of what we stood for and offering a narrative of salvation. Make no mistake, this country has paid a heavy price in blood for the sins of slavery and racism, but, as with King David repenting from his sin with Bethesda, the fact that a freedom-loving country like the United States could struggle with intolerance offers hope to others that they do not have to be damned for their own intolerance.

Today the United States offers the best hope for the world for many of the values I hold dear. The United States, for all of its very real flaws, offers an alternative to theocracy on the one hand and anti-religious secularism on the other. Our political tradition offers the necessary level of government to allow for liberty without turning toward the tyranny of the State-run economy. If the United States were to disappear, I doubt that these values would have much hope flourishing throughout the rest of the world, leaving us to choose between the tyrannies of the left and the right, religious and secular.

As it should be clear from this, I am probably more of a Christian than the majority of people who claim to be. I also actively embrace being an American. This is the country that offered a home to my grandfather, an orphan of the Holocaust, and my grandmother, who fled Hungary during the 1956 Revolution. This is my country and I am not about to forget that; I am not about to simply use the privilege of citizenship to enrich myself with government handouts. It is right for other people, even WASPs whose family history in this country goes back much further than mine, to take me at my word and accept me as an equal citizen.

Now compare this to other individuals from minority backgrounds, who take the attitude that "they did not land on Plymouth Rock, Plymouth Rock landed on them." However justified there historical grievances might be, why should anyone listening to such a listing of grievances trust the plaintiff enough to turn around and offer tolerance and even citizenship. "You Americans are a bunch of racist imperialist baby killers and I want in. Trust me; I mean you no harm and would never think to abuse equal citizenship."

Rev. James Lawson and the True Meaning of Pacifism

During the Korean War, Rev. James Lawson, a future Civil Rights leader, went to prison as a "conscientious objector" rather than serve. As someone involved in the clergy, he could have protected himself, but instead chose not to, in itself an act of protest. He argued, and in this I agree with him, that it was wrong to exempt clergymen or those studying for the job from the draft and that it was simply a means to buy off established religions by protecting their people. I certainly admire much of what Rev. Lawson would later do for the Civil Rights movement and, in practice, support non-violent tactics when dealing with private individuals protesting social and government ills. That being said we need to consider the true meaning of pacifism as a consistent ideology when practiced by the likes of Rev. Lawson.

First off, let us consider the very act of being a "conscientious objector" to the Korean War. Rev. Lawson took it upon himself to stand in the way of the United States government's efforts to protect South Korea from being overrun by the forces of Communist North Korea and China. If Rev. Lawson would have had his way with the United States government, South Korea would not be one of the leading technological innovators in the world today as well as a source for millions of new converts to various denominations of Christianity; he would have sentenced millions of people in South Korea to, like those in North Korea, starve to death in the world's largest maximum-security prison. Who knows to what extent people like Rev. Lawson bear a share of the blame for the millions of people still sentenced today to a living death in North Korea. (I do not know how someone sleeps with that on their conscience.) More importantly, by opposing a relatively justifiable war, out of an innate opposition to all war, Rev. Lawson had backed out of his covenantal obligations as a citizen. He grew up accepting the benefits of the United States government, a war-making institution but refused to follow through on his obligations when this war-making institution followed through with its foundational purpose and went to war. (Obviously, as a black man living in segregationist America, Rev. Lawson did not enjoy the full rights he deserved. As such it would have been justifiable for him to not serve until the United States lived up to its obligations to him and all blacks.) Rev. Lawson was not just expressing his opinion or even practicing civil disobedience against a law he found unjust. He was not just objecting to our involvement in Korea. He was challenging the very legitimacy of the United States government. What are governments if not an institution authorized to use violence? As such, Rev. Lawson was guilty of a passive, relatively harmless, but still quite real form of treason. I would not go so far as to have him executed, but it was certainly reasonable for him to do hard-time in prison.


While in prison, Rev. Lawson found himself threatened by the inmates and faced with the prospect of being raped. Realizing that he was not even safe in his own cell, he prepared to defend himself with a chair. This put him in a dilemma; how could he, someone who went to prison in order to avoid engaging in violence, justify using violence even to save himself from being raped.


It was at that point Lawson had one of his numinous experiences. It was as if he heard a voice explaining everything to him. Everything which had been so difficult suddenly became clear. The voice told him that he was not there of his own volition or because he had done something wrong. He had not sinned; if anything he was he was there because he had been sinned against. The voice explained his dilemma to him. "If something terrible happens to you, it's not you causing it, and what happens is not your fault. What happens would be outside your control. You are responsible for only one thing – above all you must not violate your own conscience. If something terrible happens it is because of them, not because of you. It is not about personal choice. That makes it one more thing you have to endure in order to be true to Him. It is part of the test He set out for you." When Jim Lawson heard that voice, his fear fell from him. He would not resort to physical violence to protect himself. He would endure. He prepared himself for the worst. (David Halberstam, The Children pg. 46-47.)

 In the end, nothing happened to Rev. Lawson. It is believed that one of the prisoners he befriended put the word out that Lawson was not to be touched.

One wonders what advice Rev. Lawson would have given if it had been his daughter threatened with rape. "Daughter, do not fight these men, not even with a can of mace. When these men corner you and you have nowhere to run, just submit to them and let them do what they will." Maybe Rev. Lawson could stand by his daughter's side while this is going on and read her the passages in Augustine's City of God where he argues that it is not an evil for a woman to be raped; as long as she is unwilling her soul remains undefiled and, as such it is irrelevant what happens to the body.

Loving your neighbor as you love yourself means that in order to love other people you have to start by loving yourself. As a child of God and a creature of reason, you have value. As such you are obligated to protect yourself even if it means turning to violence. Once you are obligated to value yourself, you are also obligated to value and protect every innocent person even if it means turning to violence.

The Turn toward Messianism (Part I)

One of the central elements of Jewish theology is the concept of a Messiah; that at the End of Days God would send a descendent from the house of King David to redeem the nation of Israel. This Messiah would restore the Jews to the land of Israel, rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem and inaugurate an era of peace and justice for all mankind. This belief is usually connected to an apocalyptic view of history that places history as a set drama organized by God, working toward a specific climax, which will bring about the manifested rule of God on earth. This view, in effect, postulates an end to history, where the natural order of the physical world shall forever be overturned and remade in the image of the spiritual world.


Messianism is particularly important to Judaism, because of Judaism's historical failures. Judaism failed to maintain itself as a political state. The Babylonians destroyed the first Jewish Commonwealth in 586 BCE and the Romans destroyed in the Second Commonwealth in 70 CE. Jews suffered not only physically under Christian and Islamic rule, but also existentially: how was it possible that God would allow his chosen people to undergo such humiliation. The only thing that could save the situation is a Messiah. Having a Messiah come would not only save the Jewish people from physical suffering, but it would also save Jewish history. No longer would Jews be a relic cast aside by history, they would finally be recognized, by all the world, as the chosen people of God, who kept the faith even when, to all appearances, the cause seemed lost. This would the entire narrative of Jewish suffering into one of triumph.


The contrast to Christianity and Islam is useful. Early Christianity arouse precisely as an apocalyptic Jewish messianic movement in the first century. Jesus and his followers, as Jews, stood against the Roman Empire. Jesus' crucifixion made Christianity both more and less apocalyptic. On the one hand, in classic apocalyptic fashion, Jesus dying made a second coming necessary in order to vindicate his first coming and prove that he did not die in vain. This can be most readily seen in the apocalyptic narrative of the Book of Revelation. On the other hand Christianity took an anti-apocalyptic turn particularly with Paul and the Gospel of John, which reinterpreted the Jewish tradition, in both its ritual content and messianic narrative, along "spiritual" other worldly lines. Jesus is no longer the physical redeemer of the Jewish people, but the Son of God coming to redeem the entire world from Sin. Physical redemption, like ritual law, becomes an object of polemical attack. Jews are the people of the flesh with a physical ritual law, who yearn after a redeemer of the flesh, while Christians are people of the spirit with a spiritual law, living safe in the knowledge that they have been spiritually redeemed.


This move away from apocalypticism is only strengthened in the fourth century by Christianity's takeover of the Roman Empire. Christianity changed from a religion of failed and persecuted political rebels to the established religion of an empire spanning much of the civilized world. Christianity thus, having gained its political victory, had no more need for a political redeemer. This can be seen in the historical narratives of Orosius and Augustine. The historian Orosius saw Christianity's victory over the Roman Empire as the vindication of Christianity and Christianity's ultimate victory over history. With a Christian Roman Empire, the point of all human history, both religious and secular, had been achieved. Augustine, living through the collapse of the Roman Empire at the beginning of the fifth century, took a less optimistic attitude toward the Roman Empire. He still, though, put forth one of the great anti-apocalyptic acts of Christian thought by reinterpreting Revelation as a non-apocalyptic text (An act that may be compared to Maimonides' systematic attempt to reinterpret all references in the Bible to God's physicality). Revelation was now to refer to the history of the Church. For Augustine, human history had also reached its end point. There was the political earthly city, with its rising and falling empires, and there was the city of God now established in the body of the Church. Now all that was left was to wait out the time until the second coming and the final judgment and destruction of the earth.


(To be continued …)

A Religious Defense of a Secular State Not Enforcing Biblical Punishment: My Response to Dr. Lively II

We have a second exchange of more series emails between Dr. Scott Lively and me. Dr. Lively continues his challenge to my commitment to biblical law in that I seem to be willing to let certain verses in Leviticus slide when they do not suit my liberal beliefs. There is a certain irony to this in that, as the Orthodox Jew, I take all of Leviticus very seriously, including the passages that deal with pork. I counter by using Augustine's model of two cities to formulate a religious argument for a secular state.


Mr. Chinn,


Regarding Igra's take on Shaw, I was quite clear that I don't know enough about the subject to hold a firm opinion.  It is fair to assume that you have not read the book or investigated its claims in which case it is unfair if not unscholarly to dismiss them out-of-hand.  Regarding Igra himself, if you are basing your opinion of him on Germany's National Vice, I can assure you that I have independently validated most of his assertions using mainstream sources of the period and overtly "gay" sources.  He was sensationalistic in style, but not factually wrong on most points. 

Regarding your claim to be a classic liberal, I must disagree.  Your correspondence leans much closer to the snide arrogance of the New Left than the dignified civility of classic liberalism.  

Regarding your claim to be a faithful Orthodox Jew, I believe my Orthodox friends would disagree.  By the standard you have articulated G-d Himself should be considered a "homophobe" for singling out the Sodomites of Canaan for special punishment not meted out to any other group.   In my observation, the Orthodox position acknowledges Scripture's repeated characterization of this lifestyle as an abomination, whereas your uninformed position, obviously influenced by popular culture, minimizes what G-d specially emphasized.  As for my specialization in this field of study, you should know from my writings that I oppose all forms of sex outside of marriage equally, but I focus on homosexuality because it is the only form with a global advocacy movement demanding political power and control for its practitioners.    
Regarding Uganda, my advice to the Ugandan Parliament was to go pro-active in support of marriage and the natural family to inoculate the population against promiscuity in all of its forms, and regarding homosexuality specifically I urged an emphasis on therapy, not punishment.  I did not advocate for the death penalty, nor did any of my teachings provide a reasonable rationalization for it.  The "gay" and leftist press are misrepresenting the facts for political advantage as they always do.  As for Proposition 8, your investment in its importance as a bulwark against "gay" power shows a gross misreading of the state of the culture.  Prop 8 will not stop their agenda, even if it is upheld by the 9th Circuit (a highly unlikely event in any case -- I have personally argued a pro-family case before this court and learned just how fully it is committed to the "gay" cause).  Absent a dramatic political shift of national power into the hands of people who believe like I do, you will suffer persecution for your view that homosexuality is a sin, as will I to a likely much greater extent. 
It seems rather odd that you can foresee the real possibility of persecution from them for your tepid opposition, while at the same time arguing that they do not represent a serious threat to society. That's a rather bizarre disconnect, don't you think?  They're seeking fascistic control over the speech of others but they're not really dangerous?  Sort of reminiscent of the attitude of the German Jews in the 20s, isn't it?  You really should read The Pink Swastika. 
Regarding your claim to be consistent in your principles, I don't know enough about you to say.  I suspect, however, based on our short exchange, the degree to which your ideas accommodate the politically correct sensibilities of the day (despite your claim to orthodoxy), and the "show-offish" way you've treated me on your blog that you are not. Nevertheless, as a Christian I am willing, within reason, to tolerate both your erroneous views and your demeaning tone to show you that I care about you as a person. 
I do happen to agree with some of what you wrote in your next-to-last paragraph, which I concede does reflect a more classic liberal perspective.  I also believe in freedom of choice (within reason) and would be happy to tolerate a "gay" subculture so long as it does not work to mainstream itself at the expense of family-centered society.  I also support religious freedom, but only as the concept was known by the Founders i.e. tolerance for all who acknowledge the existence of G-d.  Inclusion of atheism as a "religion" toward which government must be neutral is a 20th century concept that breaks the entire model.  Scott Lively


My Response:

Dr. Lively,

You are correct in assuming that I have not done a thorough scholarly investigation of Ingra's work nor of the claim that George Bernard Shaw wrote the Protocols. He may very well have had some evidence up his sleeve that I am unaware of. There are lots of claims that I have not given serious consideration to. For example, that it was a body double of Julius Caesar, who was assassinated and that Caesar and Cleopatra fled to the new world where they met up with the ten lost tribes and founded a race of uber-Indians, whose history was written on gold tablets buried in a hill in upstate New York. I may very well be the victim of an Augustian conspiracy to cover up this truth. The historical method upon which I rest my sanity requires that I dismiss any person making such claims as insane and be willing to sign them over to a padded cell and a lifetime supply of happy pills.

The Old Testament outlines a set of personal practices and a theocratic form of government designed to foster a community of people who keep God's law. The God of the Old Testament has 365 prohibitions, one of which happens to be against homosexuality. This biblical theocracy has many rules with extreme punishments for those who violate them. A priest who violates the most minor rule of the Temple cult is guilty of blasphemy. In a theocracy, blasphemy is, by definition, treason against the state and therefore possibly subject to the death penalty. Similarly, sexuality is a type of religious ritual subject to "Temple cult" stringencies. As such someone who goes outside the transcribed forms of sexuality, regardless of whether there is anything bad per se about this action, commits an act of blasphemy and therefore is potentially subject to the death penalty. Just as it is logically conceivable that God would have commanded us to sacrifice a cow for the paschal lamb, God could have also decided to permit us to engage in homosexual relations. In the universe we live in we testify to following God's command in our sexual activity by engaging in heterosexual sex within marriage and refraining from homosexual sex. (Whether homosexuality goes against "nature" or not is irrelevant.)

We do not live under a biblical theocracy and therefore lack the ability to punish people for violating biblical prohibitions, whether it is eating pork chops or homosexual sex. Personally, I think it is a good thing that we are not living under a theocracy and I have no intention, in practice, of trying to bring one about. On the contrary, I seek to live under a government that is completely "secular." By this I mean a government that does nothing to promote or prohibit any religious activity and devotes itself solely to protecting people from direct physical harm. We must recognize that, to go back to the Augustinian political model that is at the foundation of much of my thought, we live in a "fallen" world. As the Old Testament provides ample testimony for, people as a whole are not capable of living up to God's law. Furthermore, I would be hard-pressed to find "men of God" whom I would trust to tend his flock. All the people that I might conceivably trust would laugh at me and tell me to stop bothering them if I ever asked them to step up to the task. This leaves us with limiting the political state to building the earthly city. A properly functioning earthly city would create a large supply of virtuous and rational citizens. It is from this group of citizens that we can hope to recruit a flock of citizens for the heavenly city.
I am glad you are consistent about opposing all forms of extra-marital sex. Would you not agree that any church or synagogue that chooses to wink and nod at the transgressions of heterosexual teenagers should be consistent and look the other way at what the committed homosexual couple may or may not be doing in the privacy of their own home? We should not have a "forgive me father, I slept with my girlfriend this week again."

As of now the government of Uganda engages in coercive behavior to stop people from engaging in homosexual activity and is posed to implement even greater levels of coercion. Even to force homosexuals to undergo therapy would be physical coercion. It should be noted that I understand physical coercion fairly narrowly. For example, I would have no problem if a public school teacher put up a cross in her classroom and told her students about accepting Jesus as her personal savior over vacation.

I certainly do not see Proposition 8 as a cure-all. I do believe though that if we cannot win even on this issue then we are in serious trouble. While I believe that the modern left fully intends to persecute people like you and eventually maybe even me and do not trust them, I do not trust people like you to allow people like me to openly live our non-Jesus lifestyles and negatively influence society. My money is on trying to create a strong political center of classical liberals whose religious values support a secular government; this is what Izgad is all about. We offer a consistent set of principles that will allow our entire political spectrum to live together in peace.

To be clear, I do not view homosexuals even proactive ones as a threat. I see arrayed before me the full might of the modern left, who have destroyed the concept of rights and have reduced it to political spoils for chosen useful groups. In essence, they are armed with a checkbook full of blank checks for persecution. Homosexual activists are simply a group that has managed to end up as one of the privileged groups. It could just have easily been Mormon polygamists as the privileged group and homosexuals having their children snatched by government agents. (I do fear a right-wing theocracy, but I believe that the left is culturally in a better position to stop this than the right is for the reverse. As such I see the left as the more immediate threat.)

You say that you are willing to tolerate a gay subculture as long as it does not challenge mainstream culture. Part of tolerance is the willingness to allow groups you dislike to compete in the public arena and even win. For example, I oppose Israel's anti-missionary laws. Christians should be allowed to travel to Israel and try to convince people to believe in Jesus to their heart's content. Similarly, I support homosexuals not only being allowed to practice their chosen lifestyles with other consenting adults, but they should be allowed to take part in the public sphere and make their case to society at large. I have no problem with gay pride parades as long as they do not violate any local profanity laws. Gay advocacy groups are fine. I do not object to anyone making the case to me or my adult children that homosexuality should not be considered a sin or even that sodomy is a pleasurable activity that I should try some time. (Yes I believe in the right to offer people drugs.)

As I often point out to people, the Enlightenment model of tolerance was tolerance for all people who belonged to an established faith community or believed in a supreme being. I follow John Stuart Mill and offer tolerance for everyone as long as they can live within the law and not cause any physical harm. I am willing to give individual atheists the benefit of the doubt and assume they are moral individuals, even if I have my doubts about the ability of an atheist society to remain moral. There is also the experience of Orthodox Jews in Germany in the 19^th century. German law insisted that everyone belong to established religious communities. This was a problem for the Orthodox who desired to break away from the Reform. In the 1870s the law was changed to allow secularists to not belong to any community. This created the channel for the Orthodox to also gain the right to dissent.

Sincerely,
Benzion N. Chinn

Mother Russia and its Jews Quiz

What happened to Poland at the end of the eighteenth century and how did this affect Jews? (3 pts.)


How and why did Russian attitudes towards Jews differ from those found within western Christianity? (3 pts.)

How did the Russian government propose to deal with its Jewish problem? (Either give several examples or one in great detail) (4 pts.)


Bonus: Where is the city of Odessa located and why is it relevant to its role in the Russian Haskalah? (2 pts.)

1. Poland is divided up in a series of three partitions at the hands of Russia, Prussia and Austria, culminating in 1795 with the elimination of Poland. This resulted in Russia, completely by accident, finding itself as the host of the world's largest Jewish population, something they never intended nor desired.
   
2. Russia, as part of the Eastern Orthodox Church, did not have St. Augustine, the Latin church father par excellence, as part of their theological canon. This means no witness doctrine. As such Russia never had any reason to tolerate Jews to begin with. They never desired Jews nor did they ever invite Jews in. The Western Catholic Church could produce a Bernard of Clairvaux, who could preach a Crusade against Muslims while actively protecting Jews. Russian Orthodoxy, with the rare exception of a Leo Tolstoy, never produced any tradition of philo-Semitism at all.
   
3. The Russian government created the Pale Settlement, essentially saying that Jews could live where they were already, but nowhere else. Even in the Pale Settlement there were limits as to where Jews could live. Czar Nicholas I created the Cantonist decrees, probably one of the most fiendishly clever devices to destroy Jewish life. Jews were to now be subject to the Russian draft instead of paying a tax. (The Russian draft was for twenty-five years. Imagine what the Vietnam War protests would have been like if we were drafting people for twenty-five years.) All groups in Russia could be drafted. Jews though were subject to a special "pre-draft" to get children ready for actual service. Thus the Russian government started grabbing children twelve and even younger to train them for service when they turned eighteen. The Jewish community itself would have to decide which kids went, ensuring that the establishment would protect their own children at the expense of those less fortunate, thus undermining the Jewish community. 

Bonus: Odessa is a port city in the South of Russia on the Black Sea. Contrary to the usual stereotype of Russia as being cold and insular, Odessa is warm and quite cosmopolitan. It is not a coincidence therefore that Odessa would become a major center for the Russian Haskalah (Jewish Enlightenment).
One student wrote: "Claire was relevant because she is a main figure in the 'superhero' Enlightenment. Without her, there would be no cheerleader to save and furthermore, no world." Claire Bennett, from the show Heroes, comes from Odessa, TX. This was actually from a good student who was kind enough to indulge my sense of humor. I am a fan of the show, but still no bonus points though, just a smiley face.

Fifteenth World Congress of Jewish Studies: Religious Polemics and Conversion in the Middle Ages

Anastasia Keshman – St. Stephen’s Hand in the Wrong Hands: On a Little-Known Anti-Jewish Account from Medieval France

We have an account of how the hand of St. Stephen came to Besancon in France. The purpose of this account was to justify the authenticity of the relic. St. Stephen’s relics were hidden until they were supposedly discovered in Jerusalem in the fifth century. Immediately after the hand was brought to France from Rome it was placed in a reliquary. This reflects the reality of twelfth century France when the story was written rather than the early Middle Ages when the event allegedly took place.

Jewish thieves stole the relic in the time of Protadius (seventh century) because they wanted the golden reliquary. They threw the hand into the river Dubius. This is a parallel to the original martyrdom of St. Stephen who was stoned by the Jews. A miracle happened and the river split, leaving the hand unharmed. Fishermen found the relic. The people of the church came to the river and brought it back in solemn ceremony. According to the account, the joy of the people was as if St. Stephen had come down from heaven.

Jews play a prominent role but this is not an anti-Jewish polemic. Rather it is a miracle story in which Jews play an incidental role. Jews are greedy for gold and driven by the Devil. They do not see or hear the truth. That being said, there is no physical description of Jews. They are not described as stinking or as big nosed. The St. Stephen text avoids abusive language of Jews. Unlike later medieval texts, there is no violence done to the Jews. The Jews in the text are transient, coming and going. This may be a reference to Jewish merchants passing through. As is often the case in Christian miracle stories, Jews know but do not believe. Thus, even though they do not accept Christ, they have access to particular knowledge that serves the Christian cause. For example, the Jew, Judas, finds the true cross for Queen Helena. The Host desecration miracle of the later Middle Ages also serves this purpose. Jews steal the Host and torture it. The Host then bleeds as in Paolo Uccelo’s Miracle of the Profaned Host painting.

The Jew serves to demonstrate the power of the holy object and set the miracle in motion.


Luis Cortest – Isidore of Seville, Thomas Aquinas, and Alonso de Cartagena on Forced Conversion.

One way to think of the Latin fathers is a period in which doctrine was established. You have history of events which also serve to establish doctrine. Few works can rival Augustine’s City of God. One of his goals was to explain the existence of Jews. According to Augustine, the Jewish Diaspora helps Christians. Jews need to be dispersed to serve as witnesses. Augustine’s was a policy of relative tolerance. Whether this position is true it is clear that there is an alternative that is far more hostile as in the case of the Visigoths. It was official policy to engage in forced conversion in the seventh century as was the case with Sisebut in 612.

Isidore of Seville was a contemporary of Sisebut. Besides for his etymology, Isidore also dabbled in the contra Judaeos genre. In this period conversion was a collective act not something for individuals. Baptism was considered the beginning of the road to becoming a Christian. There is a demise of the pagan intellectual elite. This created a need for a new line of apologetics to go after those who were only nominally Christian.

The thirteenth century has been viewed as a time of intense anti-Semitism. Jeremy Cohen connects this to the friars. Such leading members of the Dominican order as Raymond Martini and Raymond of Penafort wanted a lasting solution. In pursuit of this they created an organized mission to the Jews and used rabbinic texts. Thomas Aquinas wrote Summa Contra Gentiles as per request by Penafort. There is no call for forced conversion in Aquinas. Jews and heathens are not to be compelled to believe because they never received this belief. Those who received it, though, ought to be compelled to keep it. According to Aquinas, Jews ought to be able to practice their rites because it helps the Christian faith. Other religions carry no such benefit. Jewish children should not be baptized against their parents’ will. This would violate the rights of their parents. Also children might be persuaded later if only they could come to Christianity through reason; this opportunity would be lost if force were used. There is also the argument from natural law; according to natural law the child is connected to his parents until it comes to the use of reason. Clearly not all of the friars followed a fanatical line in regards to Jews.

Alonso de Cartagena was a converso and son of Pablo de Burgos. Cartagena defended the sincerity of the conversos. Norman Roth sees Cartagena as one of the key figures in establishing the Inquisition. He put through the decree from the Council of Basil banning the practice of Judaism by conversos. Forced conversion was a practice to be done in mass and not to individuals. This was something Torquemada would later fail to understand.

My Tisha B’Av Speech to the Chofetz Chaim Heritage Foundation

Today is the fast day of Tisha B’Av (the ninth of Av) when traditional Jews mourn the destruction of the two Temples and the many subsequent tragedies of Jewish history. In honor of the event, every year the Chofetz Chaim Heritage Foundation, a Haredi organization, sponsors a video presentation shown to thousands of Jews across the world. The video usually features prominent Haredi speakers such as Rabbi Paysach Krohn (apparently he is not on for this year), Rabbi Shmuel Kamenetsky, Rabbi Yissocher Frand and Rabbi Mattisyahu Salomon. (For some strange reason when I played the ad for the event on their website they had music playing in the background. Music is certainly not something permitted today.) Usually, when I try to go, I find that the combination of my empty stomach and the rancid theology on screen proves too much for me and I end up having to walk out before the end. For all those with similar theological-gastronomical dispositions, I offer you the speech that I am confident you will not be hearing this year from the Chofetz Chaim Foundation; it is, though, what I would say if I were given the chance to speak as part of their lineup.

A good churban to all of you gathered here today from across the globe. The fact that all of you are here in the afternoon on a fast day is remarkable. I say this because I do not wish to come across as completely negative in my comments, as someone who ignores the good in our community. Now that we have gotten past that I would like to move on to business. I am not much of a storyteller nor am I the sort who likes throwing around little vertlach on midrashim, with no purpose other than to entertain and offer pithy moral value statements. I am afraid that if you are looking for someone to make you feel good about yourself you have come to the wrong speaker. By my nature, I possess a skeptical view of human virtue along the lines of Augustine and John Calvin. (You can look those people up later.)

By training, I am a historian and a contemplator of human politics and society. From this, I have become a strong believer in the importance of a bottom-up understanding of human affairs. Major changes happen in society because the vast majority of society agreed to go along with them. As Leo Tolstoy (You can look him up later as well.) understood, those at the top, those supposed “great men,” are not the ones controlling events but are being controlled by them. For example, in the case of Nazi Germany, if you ask me who was responsible for the murder of six million Jews I would not say Hitler or those who ran the camps. Every society has its insane murderous people; they should be mercifully placed in mental hospitals, protected from harm or from harming others. The people really responsible were those regular sane German people who allowed Hitler to come to power and go to war. Without millions of regular Germans agreeing to serve in the German army and run German factories there is no World War II and no Holocaust. These were sane rational people who came to the sane and rational conclusion that the removal of Jews and other undesirables and the expropriation of their property would benefit them. Going along with the Lebensraum policy, had the sanity and rationality necessary for an act of first-degree murder. If it were up to me, I would have put the entire German population above the age of eighteen on trial at Nuremberg and those who could not prove that they actively tried to stop Hitler would have received a sentence of death. (Whether or not it would have been feasible to carry out such a sentence is another issue. Most probably this death sentence would have needed to remain something symbolic.)

Similarly, with the problem of Islamic terrorism, the people responsible for Islamic terrorism are not the terrorists, such as suicide bombers and the hijackers of September 11. The real people responsible are those Muslim and liberals who act as apologists for Islamic terrorism, blaming the West and Israel for bringing trouble upon themselves. I see such people on a regular basis on the college campus where I work. These people get to pursue their vendetta against the West and they hypocritically Pontius Pilate their hands of the affair. (Look it up.) They correctly claim to not be terrorists and make a big show of taking offense at any implication that they are. In truth, they are something worse, moral scoundrels, who lack the courage to pay the true price of their beliefs.

The past few weeks have seen numerous scandals erupt from our community; whether it is youngsters from our community burning trash cans and smashing traffic lights or the arrest of rabbanim in New Jersey. The common refrain is that these are the sins of just a small minority and have nothing to do with the overwhelming majority of us who are good righteous people. My response is that these are precisely the sins not of the few but of all of us in the community for they happen because we, as a community, are making the sane rational, and immoral choices that allow for it. And let us not play innocent here, we benefit from these things. The least we can do is have the decency to openly endorse what was done.

Why do we have a population of youngsters with time on their hands and a lack of any concern for secular authority to riot? Should young men in their teens and early twenties not be in school, learning a useful trade, or in the workplace practicing a trade? No, because we created a system in Israel in which young men must sit and study Gemara and are discouraged from pursuing any other option. Most people, including people with high levels of intelligence and talent as it pertains to other fields, are not suited for Gemara. Such people might be well suited for other fields of endeavor, but they are trapped by the system they are in; the system we have created. People in such a situation might be tempted to leave the community to pursue other options, but refrain from doing so, in large part, because we have taught them to hate, fear and despise the outside world. Make no mistake about it, we did it with intent; we taught them this precisely because we knew that by doing so we could stop them from leaving, joining the ranks of the off the derech and becoming an embarrassing statistic. So we reap what we have sown in the riots. We can no more say that we did not want or endorse the riots than Arabs can denounce the state of Israel as a Nazi occupier and not support the terrorism used to destroy it.

Jewish life is expensive with tuition and large families. It does not help matters if you are less than enthusiastic about advanced secular education. (A necessary platform for many of the sorts of jobs that allow one to pay for such a lifestyle.) We can try giving tuition breaks to needy families, but that simply spreads the cost somewhere else. At the end of the day we, as a community, have to be able to come up with the funds to support ourselves. You are shocked and horrified that members of our community, even leaders in our community, turned to defrauding people of their kidneys? I am talking to the real criminals right now. No one here can play innocent. We just thought it would be best to look the other way and hoped that if we did not notice no one else would. And some Germans innocently thought that the Jews could all just be shipped off to the East and everyone would be the better for it.

For all of you so-called “Modern Orthodox” Jews sitting in this audience, feeling pretty good about yourselves right now; I mean you too. You have allowed yourselves the luxury of using systems built by others. Why are you sitting here listening to this lineup of speakers; why do you not have your own speakers, who actually believe in the sorts of things you claim to believe in? It is sheer laziness. You abandon the running of Torah-true Judaism to people who support an ideology you oppose. Do you think it actually matters that, when this ideology fails, you can claim that you did not support it; for all intents and purposes you did support it.

In conclusion, let us resolve ourselves to taking some moral responsibility for what goes on in our world. There is a churban going on right now. If you are one of those people who looked at articles in the press about Haredi rioting and complained that we are being picked on then you are responsible for our churban. If you are one of those people making comments on websites like the one run by Rabbi Yakov Horowitz, telling him that he needs to stop talking about what is wrong with our community and do more to tell us how wonderful we are, then you are part of the churban. My bracha to you all is that, if we take it upon ourselves to clean up our own mess, Hashem should bless us so that next year we will have the luxury of only having to mourn the burning of a building in the year 70 C. E.

International Medieval Congress: Day One Session One

Heretical Destructions: Incitement and Symbolic Violence

Moving Violence: Images of Persecution in Late Medieval Art – Assaf Pinkus (Tel Aviv University)

There is a certain allegorical framework to medieval depictions of violence. There is the motif of monsters and the damned in hell and the triumph of faithful. In the twelfth century we begin to see a lot more martyr cycles. Early studies have focused on these stories in terms of the life and suffering of Christ. We see St. James the Greater holding on to his head after it has been cut off. St. Denis, as contrast, is depicted as being crowned by angels, standing in victory. St. James is down on the ground and clearly suffering. St. Simon has his head split open. St. James the Lesser has an ax in his head. These violent images are shown outside the context of the suffering of Christ. Furthermore, the use of smashed limbs creates an image of submission rather than triumph.

This can be seen as an inversion of values. We see the moral triumph of those suffering in that they demonstrate their suffering. Did viewers see this as violent? Did the audience enjoy a voyeuristic sense of suffering? Caroline Bynum argues that these images were not viewed as violent but as access to the body of Christ. This is in keeping with the Augustinian bifurcation of body and spirit. Contrast to the violence of the spirit when one is forced to renounce one’s faith. Aquinas, it should be noted, argues that the body is the form of the spirit. This changes the straight dichotomy of Augustine.

Late medieval violence did not just exist in the symbolic sense; there is a growing awareness of urban violence. These depictions of the violent martyrdom of these saints was meant to confront this everyday urban violence.

The Destruction of Heretical Books – Alexander Murray (University College, University of Oxford)

There is an interest in the destruction of books that is not just school boy impishness. We are part of a culture that worship of books. Fernando Baez has a book on book burnings for those who are interested. Much of the historical destruction of books has happened not through censorship but through simple neglect. If you look at Hogarth’s Gin Lane painting you will see a wheel barrow of books going to the trunk makers.

Agobard of Lyons Opera Omnia was saved by mere chance from being turned into wrapping paper.

This presentation is a summary of a book by Thomas Werner titled Den Irrtum liquidieren Bücherverbrennungen im Mittelalter. There is nothing original in this presentation but then again originality is a modern value. Werner deals with some 200 book burnings during the Middle Ages. They become more common after 1200. In the fourteenth century you have the Wycliffe persecution which leads to a lot of books being burned. You see more censorship for a while. Then in 1521 Lutheran books are being burned in London. Jonathan Israel’s Radical Enlightenment has a lot on book burnings. Lots more books were destroyed during the Enlightenment. This has to do with the increased production of books.

Book burnings were an efficacious sign; it demonstrated things. Books were even written in order to be burned. For example there is a whole genre of collections of errors by teachers accused of heresy that students were asked to write in order to denounce those teachers. This happened particularly in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Copies of heretical books were sometimes kept in order to identify the heresy in the future. Johann Huss’ works were kept in Rome even though they were burned at Constance. Burning is actually a hard way to get rid of books. Cutting or tearing a book up make more sense, but were considered a lesser punishment than burning.

This emphasis on burning applies to the burning of heretics as well. Heretics who were dead or unavailable were burned in effigy. We have examples of where the defendant is made to burn his own books as a sign of penance. We see this with Abelard. Lollards were put on display with their books hanging from them along with faggots as a sign to where the books were headed.

What did one do with books that were a mixture of orthodoxy and heresy? Pico de Mirandola had only three thesis declared to be heretical. Yet all nine hundred were burned. This attitude runs counter to scholastic dialectic where one preserves the heretical view in order to respond to it. Huss and his followers make this point. If one burned an entire book because of it contained a heretical statement then Canon Law would have to go as well as the Old Testament as these books contain heretical statements. Also, forcing someone to burn something he believes to be true would force them to sin. They would be acting against their conscious.

It should be noted that church courts had the authority to burn books but could not burn people. This was even after the clergy had lost their monopoly on reading. The church burned books and the secular authorities burned people. Because of this, you could not have people being burned with their books. All the clergy could do to people was hand over relapsed heretics to the secular arm with a plea not to execute them. Quite hypocritical of them, one has to admit. The first time we have unequivocal evidence of a heretic being burned with their books is in 1510. Now the secular authorities are taking the lead in the pursuit of heresy.

(I spoke to Dr. Murray for a little bit after his presentation. I would describe him as some sort of ultimate Platonic version of a kindly elderly English academic.)

An Introduction and a Word of Explanation: A Response to Some Comments (Part II)

Part I

The place, I suspect, were I part ways with most of those writing comments is that I am a committed theist, even if it is a very abstract deity, and desire to come to terms with Him. I do not claim to be able to prove that this deity exists in any ultimate sense. I accept his existence as a more reasonable alternative to not having such a being. (I am willing to elaborate on this in future posts, but I expect that many of my readers will just have to agree to disagree with me on this one.)

When talking about secularism it is important to distinguish between several different issues. There are many things that may be labeled as secular that I support. For example, I support the secularization of the political sphere. I have no interest to go back to kings presiding over Church councils to decide religious dogma. This view of the political as something divorced from religion owes itself to Augustine and Thomas Aquinas as much as it does to John Locke and John Stuart Mill. I also have no interest in trying to force my own morality on other people. I am a Libertarian and I take an even more extreme stance on this issue than most liberals. I go so far as to support the legalization of prostitution and of all drugs, including hard drugs such as heroin and cocaine. I believe that a person should have the right to control one’s body so not only do I believe in legalized abortion but I also believe that people should be able to sell their kidneys and other bodily organs on the open market. I am even willing to go along with gay marriage. (I also believe that private businesses should have the right to practice discrimination but we can save that for later.) I am perfectly willing to live my own simple puritanical life in a fully hedonistic world. This would again be an example of the Augustinian side to me. I expect the world to be sinful and corrupt so I am going to live my life and not worry too much about everyone else.

This political secularism is very different from social secularism and secular moral values. While there are many social and ethical issues that we agree on and can work together like fighting poverty and racism. That being said, there are ethical differences between me and much of the secular world. For me, sexuality is an ethical issue. Sex, in of itself, is ethically problematic since it involves physically taking someone and using their body as a means to your own pleasure. (I hope to further delve into this issue in later posts) I would no more do anything to enable and encourage unmarried teenagers to have sex than I would to help them in acts of racism and intolerance that cause no physical harm to others.

There is a type of secularism that I find attractive and is where I would go if I ever decided to abandon Judaism, theistic ethical humanism. To believe in God as the creator of the laws of nature and the giver of moral law and to attempt to relate to him particularly through living an ethical life that advances the human race. This may be a more accurate description of my theology than Orthodox Judaism. (Why I remain an Orthodox Jew and do not take this option is an issue for a different post.) This brand of secularism would maintain the same moral standards as any formal religion and would still value ritual, whilst doing away with the dogma of religion; it would be a religion of reason.

Be that as it may, I choose to operate within the context of Orthodox Judaism and to relate to my theoretical deity through the prism of Orthodox Judaism. More than the Bible, this means the rabbinic tradition. As with most traditions, this is not a coherent whole but a stream with many different branches. I try to make the decisions as to what I accept not out a sense of what is most convenient for me but with an eye to defending what I see as the best of the tradition. A big part of this is that I submit myself to religious authorities and recognize that the buck stops with them. They may get it right they may get it wrong, but someone has to make a decision.

As long as I remain within Orthodox Judaism I am going to make a serious effort to keep to Jewish practice to the best of my understanding. So for example, even when I am at the HCCO banquet and I see no other Orthodox Jews around, I am not going to sample the salmon or the chocolate chip cookies even though one could make a good case that they are kosher from the perspective of the Bible. For me, kosher is a way that I can relate to God with every bite of food that I eat. I am also a Kantian so I am going to keep those rules of my own making and am not about to cheat on those rules even if it is for a small thing of little consequences. Being consistent and true to one’s own rules is something of supreme value.