Izgad 2009: The Highlights

We are finishing off the third complete year of Izgad. This year saw two hundred posts (counting this one). There were over eighteen thousand unique visits. (This was due, in large part, to one particular post.) I know that is not a lot compared to some other sites, but it marks a major step forward for me. To my loyal readers, your comments are appreciated particularly when you disagree with me. In case you missed it, here are some of the highlights.

I taught two-quarters of History 112, Modern European History, for Ohio State. This gave cause for numerous discourses about the nature of history and the historical method. There was my presentation on Wikipedia and why it is not a legitimate source. This would later lead to a letter published in the Columbus Dispatch. In my classes, I did not hold back from issues like slavery, absolutism, and the denial of equal rights to women even at the risk of going against politically correct orthodoxy. I am now teaching at the Hebrew Academy where I have had the opportunity to defend Martin Luther.

I posted my notes of a presentation given by noted atheist biologist P. Z. Myers. This turned out to be my most successful post to date in terms of hits and comments when Myers kindly put up a link. This led to several fruitful exchanges with readers of Myers' Pharyngula, who proved to be quite respectful.

My fantasy series, Asael, is beginning to take shape. For those of you who have not been following the story, there are two narratives about two different Asaels. Asael bar Serariah lives in a monastery library and is studying for the priesthood while trying to come to terms with a series of dreams involving a creature named Vorn and the legacy of his grandfather General Serariah Dolstoy. Decades earlier, Asael's uncle, Asael Dolstoy, has found himself taking a front seat to a game of scacordus and history as his father, Professor Serariah Dolstoy, takes his first steps to becoming the future legend. Both Asaels, in their own ways, must face their world's equivalent of the Enlightenment. So polish your musket, sharpen your bayonet and your Talmudic skills for things are about to get really interesting (and violent). Already there is one well toasted corpse left by an alter of a religious sanctuary, courtesy of an enforcer angel with a flaming sword.

The battle is never finished when you are fighting neurotypical bigots. Unfortunately, I also had to confront zealots from my own side. My problem is that when I talk about rights and liberty I actually mean very specific things. These are not catchphrases that you can slap on to whatever cause you wish to support at the moment. Despite my best intentions, I do seem to manage to get myself into trouble.

There were book reviews and discussions on both works of fiction and non-fiction. Christine Garwood took on flat earthers and creationists to boot. Frank Schaeffer was patient with God. (I would later lose patience with Schaeffer.) Jesus became a good Aryan Nazi. Europe lost its military culture. Harry Potter became a historical source. Did Charles Dickens have a mind-controlling beetle up his skull?

In the world of film, the Book of Esther managed to be butchered despite having some of the best talent Lord of the Rings had to offer. Transformer robots wiped Israel off the map. My favorite neighborhood vampires are starting to prove sparkly and dull, but I still love them and will defend them from the vampires of my past. Avatar might not be as liberal as many of its supporters and detractors believe.

Traveling to the very bowels of the Haredi world yielded numerous interesting conversations and tell us much about what is really going on in that world. I will not back down from exposing the followers of the late Rabbi Avigdor Miller and their apologists. You can blame me if Hershey Park gets banned. On this blog, we engaged in some friendly clashes with Bray of the Fundie over articles of faith and moral principles. At least Bray is not Authentic Judaism.

The summer trip to England yielded numerous adventures and mishaps. From my headquarters next door to Animal Farm, I hung out at Oxford and pursued acts of pilgrimage to shrines of C. S. Lewis, including a pint at his favorite pub. Burning heretics at the stake can be a worthwhile activity as long as it is done in a tolerant and ecumenical fashion. The Chabad couple in Oxford was really nice. I am not sure though if they would want me back anytime soon.

I presented papers at three different conferences. That brings my total of conference presentations up to three. At Purdue, I presented on David Reubeni and his use of violence. At Leeds, I presented on Jewish attacks on philosophy in fifteenth-century Spain. Finally, at West Georgia I presented on Orson Scott Card and the historical method.

My politics are a blend of my rationalist theism and my Libertarianism, which gives me the opportunity to make all sorts of fun arguments. Children should be given political and religious labels. People should be allowed to practice medicine without a license. We should seriously consider giving children the right to vote (and drafting them into the military).

See you all in 2010.

War and Peace: My First Conference Presentation and My Weekend at Purdue (Part IV)

(Part I, II, III)

I was supposed to be the second of two people speaking at the third session. The other person, whom I have never met and shall remain nameless, did not show up to the conference. So I got a full session all to myself to speak about David Reubeni. This presentation was based on a paper I did for Dr. Robert Davis and I intend to use it in some form for my dissertation. My presentation was on the political thought of David Reubeni, an early sixteenth century Jew who claimed to be an ambassador from several of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel. Reubeni wandered around Europe for several years attempting to form alliances with various Christian powers to fight the Muslims and was taken seriously by a number of important people, including Pope Clement VII. I argue that Reubeni managed to create a power structure around himself and claimed the sort of authority usually reserved for states. His initial success in this endeavor was due to his claim that he was a representative of a political state and a man of noble birth.

Throughout his diary Reubeni continuously strives to portray himself as a man capable of using violence. Like a political state he and his followers use “legitimate” violence against those who do not have “legitimate” power and, by doing so, bring “peace,” “justice” and “order” to all. The fact that Reubeni represented a state and acting against individuals who did not represent states, by definition, meant that his acts of violence were legitimate and that they were just and that the actions of his opponents were, by definition, illegitimate. In keeping with his interest in violence, Reubeni took a great interest in the instruments of violence such as swords, armor and particularly guns and his ability to possess and use them. I offered an analysis of several episodes found in Reubeni’s diary, where we see him playing the role of a statesman, engaging in acts of violence and thereby attempting to bring about justice, order and peace.

My intention was to move beyond the traditional issues regarding Reubeni - Reubeni the messianic claimant and Reubeni the con-man. He may have been a fraud, but he was also a brilliant political thinker, with a plan of action built around issues pertaining to this world and not just apocalyptic expectations. Ultimately, and this is the main point of my dissertation, I wish to, following in the footsteps of Norman Cohn and Richard Popkin, challenge the distinction between apocalyptic Messianism and earthly politics.

If readers of this blog are interested I might post a fuller version of the paper As I was the sole presenter at this session I spoke for a little longer than my allotted twenty minutes and we had a longer than usual question and answer session afterwards. The people in attendance were simply a fantastic audience so this session ended up going on for close to the allotted hour.

After attending a conference full of post modern liberal sophistry, I was looking forward to driving back to Columbus with Cory Driver. We were driving through rural Indiana (Sarah Palin’s real America) when we stopped at a gas station. In what can only be described as something out of a comedy sketch, the gas station was named Gas America.

I went inside and did not find Achmed the Dead Terrorist behind the counter. Instead I found what looked to be a perfectly normal American girl.

War and Peace: My First Conference Presentation and My Weekend at Purdue (Part III)

(Part I, II)

The second panel was on the Middle East and was chaired by Rebecca Nicholson-Weir. The first speaker was my new found friend Cory Driver from Ohio State. His presentation was titled “Traces of Silvers: Remembrances of Jewish Members of a Moroccan Mixed Ethnic and Religious Community.” Driver offered a reconstruction of Jewish life in the Moroccan village of Midelt, near the Atlas Mountains. There is no longer a Jewish community in Midelt, but he did some field work in the area. Particularly he struck up a friendship with one of the local inhabitants, who proved to be a rich source of stories. Midelt was actually the second place in Morocco to get electricity. This region is rich in apples and was originally settled by Berbers. There are different tribes in the area, which have a history of not getting along and there is some questions in reconstructing their conflicts as to who attacked whom first and stole the land. Jews served as clerks to the garrison nearby. Driver’s friend, was close to a Jewish family, the Azlars. They claimed to be descended from saints and that they had the power to bless objects, a service that their Muslim neighbors made use of. (This “ecumenical” use of saints was actually quite common between Jews and Muslims in North Africa and can be traced back to the Middle Ages. They were in the habit of giving candy to the local children as a way of getting them not to steal from them. They were involved in stealing grain from the government; government workers were paid to “lose” the grain. Things turned downhill for Jews particularly after the Six Day War in 1967. We have a case were a Jew was shot and killed for celebrating the Israeli victory. The picture that one gets is that while Jewish Muslim relations should not be romanticized, there existed fair amount of pragmatic co-operation.

(I particularly liked the fact that Driver discussed some of the methodological problems with personal histories, an issue that I have discussed previously in this blog. He openly acknowledged that his source often contradicted himself with different versions of the same story. He presented what he took to be the most authoritative versions.)

The second presentation of the panel was “Conflicted Resistance: The Performance of Violence in Wild Thorns and Waltz with Bashir” by Aileen Esmat Genaidy of the University of Cincinnati. As Edward Said pointed out in Orientalism, Westerners tend to think of Arab nationalism as inherently violent. It is all a question of personal agency. Palestinian identity goes back before 1948 but has not become synonymous with the struggle with Israel. The novel Wild Thorns moves from mourning over 1948 to the romantic resistance of 1967 from the Palestinian perspective as various characters struggle to decide how best to resist Israel. The Israeli film Waltz with Bashir moves deals with the First Lebanon War. The director attempts to patch together his memories of the war. There is a narrative distance between the soldiers and the civilians. The film distorts the nature of the conflict both in terms of the actual violence and the symbols of it. Unlike Wild Thorns there is no sense of self agency for Arabs.

(So we actually had a real life anti Israel screed at this conference. During the presentation I thought I heard Genaidy use the term “Palestinian Genocide.” During the Q&A section I asked her if I had heard her correctly. She responded that yes she had used that term. She then backed off from it. So not only does she slander Israel, she does not even have the spine to defend herself. Someone else asked her about the film, the Reader, which had been criticized for taking away Jewish self agency. Lo and behold, Genaidy defended the Reader. So what we have learned is that one must be very careful to acknowledge Arab self agency, but it is perfectly ok to deny Jewish self agency.)

(To be continued ...)

War and Peace: My First Conference Presentation and My Weekend at Purdue (Part II)

(Part I)

The second paper was “The Moral Significance of Recognizing Violence in Pogge’s Borrowing and Resource Privileges,” presented by Mark Balawender of Michigan State University. Thomas Pogge attacks borrowing and resource privileges, arguing that the developed world acts as an enabler to authoritarian governments as they borrow money and cause economic harm to their people. This process of borrowing money in exchange for resource privileges allows corrupt third world governments sell out their own countries. There is not normative standard to judge the legitimacy of governments. This allows authoritarian governments to seize power and gain money quickly even though this harms the population. How does one deal with this from the perspective of liberalism which allows economic transactions that only incidentally cause harm to other people?

A useful analogy is the case of two parallel paths one higher up than the other where the rocks from the higher path can cause harm to those on the lower half. Such a situation is okay where the population freely chooses which path to take. What happens when you have a case where the path one chooses is dependent on one’s social or economic status? This would create a different moral situation. Thus such instruments of global Capitalism as lending money to corrupt third world regimes in exchange for resources should be classified as forms of violence and should be viewed as wrong within the parameters of liberalism.

I found this presentation amusing mainly because it reminded me so much of Talmudic dialectics. As a good traditional liberal I oppose the aiding and abetting of authoritarian regimes. As a believer in free markets, though, I have the ultimate weapon against such regimes, Capitalism. Under free market conditions it is not in my interest to support authoritarian regimes even when control over their natural resources. Such regimes are likely to fall and the new regime is unlikely to respect its predecessor’s agreement, particularly if they are able to make the case to the world that this was a bargain made between thieves, designed to impoverish the country. I raised this issue with Balawender and he responded that Pogge had used a similar argument.

The final presentation of the first session Nathan Stout of Western Michigan University, “The Torture Memo: A Philosophical Critique” Prof. John Yoo’s Torture Memo, on behalf of the Bush administration, allowed for extreme interrogation tactics. Yoo defines Al Qaida members both as enemy combatants and as unlawful combatants. He assumes that 9/11 was a declaration of war on the part of Al Qaida and therefore the United States entered a formal war with Al Qaida no different than a war with a established state. This makes what happens next to fall under the military; Al Qaida fighters are military combatants. On the flip side, since Al Qaida does not keep to the established protocols of war, they are unlawful combatants, no different than spies. Congress does not have the authority to interfere with the President’s handling of unlawful combatants and the President is free to do with them as he wishes. How does one go about defining combatants and unlawful combatants? We assume that enemy combatants lose their rights to life and liberty because they choose to participate in war. This is in keeping with Just War theory. An unlawful combatant wishes to fight while maintaining the protections of a non combatant; he therefore loses the rights of lawful combatants. Yoo’s model would require one to assume that Al Qaida soldiers had a right to fight to begin with. Yoo, though, rejects the notion that Al Qaida is in any way a legitimate political entity. This being the case one should not be able to say that the United States is at war with Al Qaida.

I have not studied Yoo’s arguments, though the argument he makes seems to be very similar to the one that I made in a debate on Atheist Ethicist. I argued that the Al Qaida fighters held on Guantanamo Bay get the worst of both situations. As out of uniform combatants they have no legal rights. As prisoners captured during combat they do not need to be tried. The challenge being raised against Yoo seems to have a very simple solution, accept that Al Qaida is a political entity and should be treated as a state. I raised the scenario with Stout where Al Qaida would have acted “legally.” Al Qaida issues a formal declaration of war on the morning of 9/11 before they hijacked the plans. Uniformed Al Qaida soldiers get past security and hijack civilian airliners. After somehow getting all civilians off the plans they then crashed the planes into military targets such as the Pentagon. America declares war against Al Qaida and invades Afghanistan. Uniformed Al Qaida fighters clash with American forces out in the open, away from civilians, and are captured. I would have no problem with saying that Al Qaida prisoners should, under such circumstances, be treated with full legal rights as if they were from England, France or Canada and protected from torture. Since this is not the case, I have no problem in stripping Al Qaida fighters of their legal rights and handing a blank check to our government to torture them.

(To be continued …)

War and Peace: My First Conference Presentation and My Weekend at Purdue University (Part I)

For the weekend of April 3-4 I was in Lafayette IN for a conference at Purdue University, titled War and Peace: Discourse, Poetics, and Other Representations. This was my first conference presentation and I presented my paper on David Reubeni. The conference was for graduate students so this was certainly a minor league affair, but I am glad that I was able to attend as this summer I will be presenting at the International Medieval Congress in Leeds England, a major league affair. As one might expect from the title, this conference was pretty top heavy in terms of post modernism. Of the presentations I attended Cory Driver’s and mine were the only ones that were not open exercises in post modernism. There was also the issue of liberal politics; as one might expect there was a fair amount not so subtle Bush bashing with some shots at Israel thrown into the mix. All in all it was a wonderful conference, though, and I really would like to thank the people who helped put it together particularly John White and also Jessica Raffelson, who chaired my session.

I was in a bit of quandary in trying to find accommodations for Shabbos. I was in luck and was put in contact with the Aldrich family and was able to spend Shabbos with them. Dr. Daniel Aldrich is a professor in the political science department at Purdue. He and his wife are now on my list (somewhere near the Klappers) of things that are right with Orthodox Judaism. They are one of the few Orthodox people in Lafayette and Dr. Aldrich’s wife home schools their three adorable children. They have also lived in Japan for a number of years, during which time Dr. Aldrich wrote articles, on the side, for the Haredi newspaper Hamodia about living as a Jew in the Far East. I presented on Friday but was thinking of walking back to Purdue on Shabbos to sit in on at least some of the day’s presentations. In the end I did not; I was having too much fun at the Aldrich’s. I had a great discussion with Dr. Aldrich about my favorite polemical topic, Haredim. I was on the offensive, he was on the defensive. This ended up branching out into post modernism; it turns out that he is even more hostile to post modernism than I am. I had to defend my willingness to use such terms as “Imperial Haredism” or “Haredi creation of the Other.” I do recognize the value of certain post modern terms, questions, and concepts as long as they do not become ends in of themselves.

As to the conference itself. The first panel was on Theorizing War and was chaired by Sol Neely. Ethan Sproat of Purdue University spoke on “War and Its Purification.” It was an examination of Kenneth Burke’s views on war within the context of Friederich Nietzsche. According to Burke, war is an object of communication and as a means of communications. This is Burke’s attempt to look at the symbolism of war as a means of getting around the act of war itself. Burke was influenced by Nietzsche. Nietzsche viewed war as the actions of people who already lived condemned lives. Actual war is a disease; it is built around a cult of empire and relies on dissipation and fanaticism. This is a type of reasoning that desires to eliminate all forms of opposition; Nietzsche refers to this as a “diseased form of reasoning.” Burke notes that all organisms live by killing. Move from the hand to the fist. Nietzsche also recognized this need for violence.

Nietzsche felt comfortable only with Heraclitus who said that “things become through war.” Strife is required for cooperation; there is a value in having enemies. Nietzsche self consciously used “war” instead of “strife.” War is a onetime event instead of something continuous. He believed in attacking ideas that have been victorious where one stands alone in opposition. One attacks ideas and not people. To attack is proof of good will. One can only wage war against equals. Nietzsche believed that it was important in preserving the enemy even the Church so in a sense Nietzsche’s attack on Christianity was, from his perspective, a true act of love.

Burke employs Nietzsche’s use of war as a way of establishing community. There is an element of competition; we engage in communion through competition. A pure act is always symbolic. As applied to war this would mean war without actual war, just the symbols of war. Pure war preempts actual war and reverses the relationship between symbols and actions.

Sproat ended his presentation with a nod to those in attendance. This conference is an act of pure war. We engage and challenge others. Despite our differences we still see engagement as something of inherent value. The questions becomes how do we bring these values of pure war to those already engaged in actual war.

Despite the underlying liberal polemic and post modern discourse of this presentation I did enjoy this one. Particularly since I love Nietzsche and it was wonderful to see someone embrace Nietzsche whole heartedly without any concern for being labeled a racist a Nazi or, even worse, a sexist.

(To be continued …)