Fifteenth World Congress of Jewish Studies: The Temple in Second Temple and Rabbinic Literature

Louis H. Feldman – Philo’s Attitude toward the Temple in Jerusalem

Despite the fact that Philo was so important in the political life of Alexandria, he says very little about himself. He had a brother, Lysimachus, whose son, Tiberius, left Judaism, become governor of Egypt and was a general in the war against Judea. We have more philosophical writings from Philo than anyone in the period. Josephus mentions him briefly. Jerome refers to him as a Christian monk in Alexandria. There is a legend that Philo met with Peter. In essence Philo was made a Christian in honoris causa.

Philo wanted to be a philosopher and a mystic rather than a communal leader. As a biblical commentator, he criticized both extremes in the literal versus inner meaning debate. This would destroy the sanctity of the Temple to just go with the inner meaning. This was certainly an issue of great importance to Philo as talks about personally going to the Temple. He also prominently discusses the attempt by Caligula to stick a statue of himself in the Temple. In the letter from Agrippa to Caligula, quoted by Philo, Agrippa talks about how the Temple is the most beautiful in the world and that he is proud to have it in his home city. Philo does not mention the temple of the Samaritans. For him the Temple in Jerusalem is the end point of heaven and earth. He is proud of the fact that money collected from Jews around the world goes to the Temple. According to Philo, there are two temples; the one in Jerusalem and that of the rational facilities.
(I asked Dr. Feldman about Philo’s Hebrew. It is generally acknowledge that Philo did not know Hebrew and that he was completely dependent on the Septuagint. If Philo loved the Temple so much why did he not bother to learn the language spoken in it. Feldman suggested that Philo may have been so devoted to the Bible and connecting it to Greek thought that he neglected other issues like the language of the Bible.)

Michael Tuval – From Temple to Torah: On the Development of Josephus’ Religion

Josephus went from Jerusalem to Rome and became a Roman citizenship. He changed as a person from a Jerusalem priest to a Diaspora intellectual. Diaspora Judaism was different in that it downplayed the role of the Temple. Instead it focused on synagogues and other communal institutions. For Jews in the Diaspora biblical heroes were better intercessors in heaven than earthly priests. For Judean Jews, Mosaic Law was the law of the land. For Diaspora Jews, Mosaic Law was something they kept as a matter of choice. Josephus places greater emphasis on Mosaic Law in his later work Antiquities than in the Jewish War. Jewish War can be seen as a theological text. God destroyed the Temple because of the sins of the Judeans. It had nothing to do with the strength of Rome. This is a Temple centered world view. By the time we reach the Antiquities he is a biblical expert. He is also takes a more favorable view of the Pharisees as interpreters of the Law.

Religion in America Blog

I would like to put the word out about a blog that I just came across called Religion in America. This site is run by Paul Matzko and Lincoln Mullen, who are graduate students in history. What makes this blog of particularly interest to me is the fact that Matzko and Mullen are both from Christian Evangelical backgrounds. Their site is largely about the confrontation between their academic selves and religious fundamentalism. As readers of this blog know, my confrontation with my own fundamentalist background is a major topic here. Matzko and Mullen deserve a lot of credit for the quality of their writing. Their work is sophisticated yet should be readable even by this that lack academic backgrounds. This blog is still fairly new, but I am looking forward to see what they do with it.

Fifteenth World Congress of Jewish Studies: Reconsidering the Portuguese Jewish Nation

Yosef Kaplan – Building of Sephardic Communities in the “Confessionalization Era:” A Comparative Approach

Confessionalization has not paid attention to Jews. Few references to Jews refer them as a marginal group influenced by Calvinists and Catholics. Jews in fact did undergo their own Confessionalization process even though they had no legal force behind this move. Confessionalization can be seen as the process of creating barricades around different churches. (For example, over the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Western Europe became fractionalized into Catholic, Lutheran and Calvinist regions; each one committed maintaining their ideological distinctions even through force.) This model can be used to understand the western Sephardic Diaspora.

Sephardic Confessionalization, like the general European one, required the effort to consciously establish boundaries. Spokesmen used Manichean rhetoric of the struggle of the religion wars; Judaism gives eternal salvation versus Christianity which offers eternal damnation. (For a specific example of this see Marc Saperstein’s Exile in Amsterdam: Saul Levi Morteira’s Sermons to a Congregation of “New Jews.”) No state stood behind the “Nacion;” we are dealing with an ethnic group that possessed different faiths. Those who followed the banner of traditional Judaism wanted to affect a confessional migration away from lands where Judaism could not be practiced.

The Sephardic elites, backed by the secular authorities, used the power of medieval communities to their utmost. Isaac Cardoso, a converso who returned in Verona, based his ideal government on the model of the Nacion. According to Abraham Pereyra, governors are in charge but they must follow the guidance of the rabbis who are experts in Jewish law. This follows the model of Christian thought as to the relationship between rulers and clergy.

We do not have confession manuels for Sephardic communities. On the book shelf of our former Spanish and Portuguese conversos we find books on prayer and treasuries of commandments. Ceremonies of circumcision were particularly important for those coming from the peninsula. Shavuot became a central event. Proclamations of excommunication were given special pomp as well as the confessions of those who wished to return. This is a very confessional mode of thinking. Sephardic culture presented Judaism civilized and culture in keeping with European genteel culture. Architecture was keeping with confessionalization. We see church-like disciple and a demand for uniformity in dogma. Extensive social discipline was designed to ensure obedience to the ruling system and the unity of the congregation. (For more on this topic see Miriam Bodian’s Hebrews of the Portuguese Nation.)

This does not fit into the Jacob Katz model, which focused on Ashkenazic Jews. With Katz there is little effort to distinguish Jews from Christians in terms of doctrine. (See Tradition and Crisis) We have dozens of Sephardic anti-Christian polemics. For those who had left Christianity the debate with Christianity was an intrinsic part of their being.

(During the question and answer session someone asked about the lachrymose narrative. Kaplan made the interesting point that the main source of the lachrymose history today are general European history text books in which Jews do not exist unless as victims, being kicked out of England and from Spain. All this leading up to the Holocaust.)

Fifteenth World Congress of Jewish Studies: Teaching Jewish Thought

Jonathan Cohen – The Concept of Responsibility in Levinas and Soloveitchik: Implications for Jewish Education

Emmanuel Levinas’ Totality and Infinity makes for an interesting comparison to Rabbi Yosef B. Soloveitchik. This should not be surprising as they both came from the Lithuanian tradition. Levinas has three different types of people. Soloveitchik, his essay “Confrontation” is similar. The first level for Soloveitchik is the natural man. Levinas, similarly, has the level of enjoyment. These are the unmediated imbibing of the environment. At this level there is no reflection. The next level for Soloveitchik is Adam the First; he is a dignified planner. For Soloveitchik there is no dignity without responsibility. One cannot assume responsibility as long as one cannot live up to his commitments. Levinas has man engaging in labor. He plans for the future and sets means and relations to ends. Soloveitchik’s Adam Two is devoted to total sacrifice to the other. Levinas has the man forced to sacrifice in the face of the other. For Soloveitchik, communication becomes a redemptive act while for Levinas one is commanded by the mere face of the other.

The major difference between Soloveitchik and Levinas is over the issue of responsibility. To be responsible, for Soloveitchik, is to take charge. For Levinas it is the readiness to respond to the other. This does not require power. On the contrary, human beings, by definition, are not powerful. This is the basis of Levinas’ attack on Paul and Christianity. As we fulfill commandments we take on more responsibilities so we can never fulfill them all. We are by definition inadequate; we are always late. This leaves us in a state of insomnia as we need to be in a state of perpetual readiness.

To apply this to education. Soloveitchik seems to follow the Dewy education system. Education should be a microcosm of the real world. If one wants a democratic system you have to bring democracy into the classroom and teach the students the sort of responsibility and restraint necessary for a democratic society. Levinas would need a different educational strategy. One that takes into account the perpetual debt to the other and perpetual guilt. This would require a system that works counter to what we want; much as art and sports education run counter to what we want. We want spontaneity, but to get that we need drill. For Levinas, we need to give students a sense of empowerment even though we intend to depose the ego.

Fifteenth World Congress of Jewish Studies - Jewish Thought: New Challenges

Alan Brill – Is There Still a Mystery to Mysticism after Modernity?

You can find the full lecture at Fordham. This is just a small piece that deals with Judaism. Today mysticism has dropped off the map. Instead we tend to use words that are more descriptive. There are five major schools in thinking about mysticism.

The first school treats mysticism as a series of texts that offers images. This is the view you can find in Bernard McGinn and the Chicago school. Michael Fishbane is a Jewish representative of this school. For him mystical texts are a continuation of midrashic interpretation. The second school focuses on the lack of divine presence. This is very useful for people who do not want to talk about God anymore. An example of this is Arthur Green. According to Green, God withdraws from a dimension and allow us to engage in our own interpretation. You can use god language without dealing with the implications of it. The third school is the political. I will not deal with it here, considering where we are. The fourth school sees mysticism as esoteric writing and knowledge. This covers a wide range of people. Moshe Idel, for example, treats Kabbalah as esoteric knowledge, a map that one becomes familiar with. The goal of Kabbalah is to unpack the text using a number of methods. He downplays negative theology and Neo-Platonism in Kabbalah. Moshe Halbertal now follows this. In a strange way the Kabbalah Center also works like this. They have hidden secrets, technology of sorts, to understand the universe. To go to the other extreme, Haredi Kabbalist Moshe Shapiro works within this school. This allows him to go against science. From his perspective, he knows the secrets of reality and you in the university are just grasping at it. The fifth school focuses on meditation. Mysticism is not secret but an open practice that one learns how to do. The Dalai Lama and Mary Carruthers of NYU operate within this model. Carruthers even looks at medieval texts like this.

Many of us are used to looking at the Zohar from twentieth century categories. The first model looks at the metaphors for their own sake. What do they mean? The second model would try to deflect the theist language. If God is a tree it is not as scary. The fourth wants to ask about how you go from the plain meaning to the esoteric. The final model looks at the pragmatic elements. In the last twelve years there has been a turn away from devekut. Texts have become resources in of themselves. To make the comparison of the spider and the silkworm. In the Ingmar Bergman film, Through a Glass Darkly, a woman sees God as a spider. In the Zohar God is a silkworm spinning the universe. In post modernism we are no longer interested in the experience but in the image itself, god as the spider, god as the silkworm.

(See here for a series of clips of Dr. Brill teaching meditation. I will leave it to the reader to come to their own conclusions as to where Dr. Brill stands in terms of the various models he outlined.)

Eric Lawee – Adam’s Mating with Animals: New Data on Christian and Jewish Receptions of a Strange Midrash

And now for something completely different. According to the opinion of Rabbi Eliezer, Adam mated with every species of animal but was not satisfied until he mated with Eve. Midrashim can have an effect even centuries after it was written. Rashi modified the midrash, but did not view this as strange that the first man engaged in bestiality. It only becomes a problem once Christians pick up on it. In the thirteenth century this Midrash was used by Nicholas Donin to attack Jews. Pablo Santa Maria also used this Midrash to mock Judaism. One solution for Jews was to read this non-literarily. Shem Tov, for example, argued that one should interpret such things according to their allegorical meaning in the way of Maimonides. Moshe ibn Gabbai interpreted this Midrash as saying that Adam investigated every animal with his intellect.

There is new data from the sixteenth century. This is the start of print and a wider diffusion of rabbinic writing among Christians. Sixtus of Siena, an apostate, used this Midrash. Johannes Reuchlin defended Rabbi Eliezer by saying that he only felt desire when he came to Eve. Rauchlin’s Jew, Simon, quotes Sefer Nizzahon (See David Berger’s Jewish-Christian Debate in the High Middle Ages.) arguing that Adam could not have had intercourse with insects. Censorship was one Christian solution for such a problem. In the third Bamberg edition we see a denuded Rashi that does not refer to this midrash.

In modern times we have Pastor Cohen G. Reckart in the role of Nicholas Donin for the internet age. He says about the Talmud that “No Christian could read this book in a true heart of faith in Jesus and not come away from a study of it shocked and alarmed.”Rabbi Shimon Schwab distinguished between higher order versus lower order animals. Adam might have had intercourse with high more human like animals. The Schottenstein Talmud goes in a different direction of earlier Artscroll references to Rabbi Eliezer, which acknowledged different opinions on the matter. The Schottenstein Talmud simply follows Maharal and says that this should not be taken literally.

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.

Fifteenth World Congress of Jewish Studies: What is Jewish (If Anything) in Isaiah Berlin’s Philosophy?

Dikla Sher – Isaiah Berlin vs. Hannah Arendt: Their Political Ideas through the Prism of their Jewish Identities

Isaiah Berlin and Hannah Arendt were very different thinkers. Berlin was quite open in his contempt for her. Much of their differences can be seen in their different experiences with totalitarianism and their criticism of Enlightenment. Berlin opposed the over-rationalism of the Enlightenment. The claim that human’s are the same everywhere and should have one reason. This comes from the Platonic ideal of one universal that applies everywhere. Such monism inevitably leads to totalitarianism. Arendt, coming from her personal experience with Nazi Germany, saw the failure of human rights as something beyond any government. Her criticism is political and not philosophical. For Arendt the most important right is to have rights. Such rights are based on societies and not, as Berlin argued, with individuals.
Berlin divided liberty into positive and negative liberty; he preferred negative liberty. True liberty requires examination, active decisions; to be free is to make an unforced choice. The attraction of totalitarianism is that it allows man to avoid action. Arendt distinguished freedom from liberty. True political freedom cannot be ownership but is part of man’s essence. To be free is to act. This action must take place in a shared public space.

Berlin acknowledged a value to nationalism in that it served the need for a common culture. Arendt’s community is not national; she opposed the nation state. In its place she supported a republican alternative. This is not the classic model of republicanism; Arendt went against Rousseau in that there, for her, is no giving up of individuality to the republican state. Instead one takes on an additional identity; thus making the individual life richer.

Neither Berlin nor Arendt believed that one had to be religious. They do not use Jewish sources. Their Jewish identities, though, were dominant. Berlin celebrated Jewish holidays as a way to identity with his community and heritage, which he wanted to continue. Arendt, writing to Scholem, said that she never felt that she had to identify herself as a Jew; being a Jew was a fact of life. Berlin was a strong supporter for Zionism from the beginning. Arendt saw the power of Zionism in terms of taking responsibility for Jewish problems. She turned against Zionism, though, when she found out that it would be a Jewish national state without cooperation with the Arabs. It was a forced solution after the social one had failed.


Joshua Laurence Cherniss – Judaism, Jewishness, and Liberalism in Isaiah Berlin’s Political Thought

There is a difference between Judaism and Jewishness. Judaism here can be taken to refer to a set of given beliefs. Jewishness is to be defined in terms of a culture that one is in dialogue with. In terms of Judaism there is not much there in Berlin. He did not use Jewish texts in his writing. Conditioned by his own views of Judaism as an intellectual position, he viewed Judaism as a series of claims that were outside of reason or ethics. A pivotal example of this is God commanding Abraham to sacrifice his son. Similar to Yeshayahu Leibowitz, Berlin saw this as a move against the ethical. For Berlin, to respect Judaism was to reject it.

Berlin was engaged in the situation of Jews in a post emancipation world. For Berlin this emancipation was a failure. This larger course of Jewish history comes from his experience with the Russian situation. There was more persecution, but Jewish life enjoyed a greater coherence and integrity. It was not surprising to Berlin that Zionism was more successful in Russia than in the West. Jews had a model in the Russian intelligentsia to imitate, which Berlin greatly admired this. Berlin also had his experience with British Jewry. They lacked persecution but suffered from a class conscious society. They were caught trying to fit into society that was not made for them, wearing clothes that did not fit. For Berlin liberty was a matter of choice. To be deprived of choice is to be denied the fundamental dignity of a human being. The tragedy of the Jew was that choices were not open to them.

(During the question and answer section there was some discussion of A. N. Wilson’s attack on Berlin as the “dictaphone don” in the Times Literary Supplement, which depicts Berlin in ways that were quite contrary to that of the panelists.)

The Fifteenth World Jewish Congress: Jewish Centers in Medieval Western Europe

Bernard Rosensweig – Did Rabbis Play a Central Role in the Ashkenazic Communities after the Black Death?

The Black Death more so than the Crusades was the turning point for German Jewry. Rabbi Jacob Weil divides the level of scholarship between before and after the decrees following the Black Death. Acts of violence, committed during this period had succeeded in eliminating many scholars and lowered the level of scholarship. New laws needed to be clarified. We have a rabbinic conference in Nuremberg in 1438 to deal with this breakdown in community. The creation of books of customs now became necessary as questions of daily routine now came to the fore.

In this period of confusion and chaos, the rabbi stepped into the void and provided a singular kind of leadership, going beyond the individual community. The rabbi serves as a center of Jewish unity, providing continuity and structure. We can see this in the attempts by the civil authorities to impose the position of chief rabbi on communities. These attempts failed but they show how important the position was and that the authorities were aware of this. An example of this new kind of rabbi was Rabbi Jacob Weil, who represented the community of Augsburg in negotiating with the emperor and at Nuremberg. We may bemoan the abuse of authority by unsavory characters only goes to show a new found power to the rabbinate as the community is weakened.

Mordechai Breuer wished to show that the rabbinate as was on the decline and that rabbis were caught in the position of trying to stem the tide going against them. Rabbi Moshe Mintz was the only rabbi to put in ordinances based on his own authority. He did this in Bamberg. They are in the most obvious areas on religion. There is nothing on communal life like personal status and monetary issues. Mintz only recording some of his ordinances. In order to establish his authority, he had to do so in the most obvious areas of Jewish life.

Rabbi Jacob Weil, when he came to Erfurt, found a community is disorder and put in ordinances to clarify basic matters of Jewish law. It is true that it was the parnaism who negotiated tax agreements and collected them from the community. Rabbis did, though, have a role in taxes. They helped set the ground rules for assessing taxes. Wealthy Jews tried to get special breaks, increasing the burden on the rest of the community. Rabbi Israel Isserlin declared that a practice had to done by the community three times in order to take effect.

In conclusion, there are clear continuities after the Black Death. We see more of a professional rabbinate. This generation did produce a talented group of scholars and they launched a new school of scholarship that influenced Rabbi Moshe Isserles in the sixteenth century. There was a decline but it was not at the beginning but rather at the end of the fifteenth century as Israel Yuval argued.

(Dr. Haym Soloveitchik goes to the other extreme, arguing that Germanic Jewry was on the decline from the end of the thirteenth century due to the collapse of imperial authority during these decades, which resulted in the large scale massacre of Jews.)

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.

Libertarianism: The Healthy Choice for Single Hispanic Mothers

In response to my recent post on Milton Friedman, Miss S. asked about how someone like him would have dealt with the issue of health care. One of the things I so admire about Milton Friedman was that, unlike what you might think, he was motivated to advocate for libertarian positions in large part precisely because he cared so much about the poor and minorities, people without access to the establishment. Friedman was the son of working-class Jewish immigrants so this was something very personal for him. Friedman was a far greater thinker than I, but I think he would have approved of my sentiments regarding health care and how I would solve our health care crisis.

I have a younger brother, Mortimer Elliot, who is about to go into medical school. Unlike me, he is going to be the doctor who actually makes money. On this path though, he will spend years working miserable hours and contracting hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt. What if Mortimer decided to skip medical school and set up shop as a non-licensed physician? Mortimer was a pre-med student in college and has worked as an intern in hospitals and even at the National Institute of Health. Without a doubt, he can handle basic issues of medical care. We are not talking about him performing brain surgery anytime soon. What we are talking about is him being able to give people basic checkups, figure out what is hurting them and advise his patients as to how to best pursue a healthy lifestyle.

Since Mortimer would be competing against doctors who have gone through medical school and have state-issued licenses he would have to charge less for his services and maybe even be willing to go to places that established physicians might shy away from; maybe a place like Washington Heights. In Washington Heights, you will find many poor Hispanic single mothers trying to make ends meet while raising their children. When faced with a child complaining of stomach pain or of a fever it would be very helpful to, instead of going to the emergency room or messing around with health insurance which they may or may not have, be able to go to Mortimer for help. For a very reasonable fee, say $10-$50 depending on the situation, Mortimer will be able to do so. The fact that Mortimer is cheaper and more accessible than established doctors means that people will come to him sooner with problems. This has the benefit of allowing him to catch and help prevent more serious issues.

Fraud will still be illegal even under a libertarian government so Mortimer will not be allowed to represent himself as anything besides someone with an undergraduate medical education. If he does he will go to jail. Since a libertarian government will be freeing all those sitting in jail on drug charges, many of whom just might be the fathers of some of the children in question, there will be plenty of resources to devote to going after those who commit fraud and we will have the jail space to keep such people behind bars for years to come.

Allowing poor Hispanic single mothers to have easier access to basic medical care and Mortimer to make an honest living sounds like an obviously good thing. The only problem with this idea is that right now one would run into some serious legal issues. So you have to ask yourself, who benefits from banning something that would benefit so many people. It is our medical establishment, full of wealthy white males, who benefit; they receive a monopoly on health care and can, therefore, charge inflated prices and offer inferior services. So being a libertarian means helping poor Hispanic single mothers to get better access to health care. Not being a libertarian means helping wealthy white doctors line their pockets at the expense of the health of the less fortunate. If being a liberal means supporting the poor and disadvantaged than the only option for a liberal of conscious is libertarianism.

For those interested, there are more clips available of Milton Friedman from other interviews and his show Free to Choose.

A Different Sotomayor

Reading Yosef Yerushalmi’s From Spanish Court to Italian Ghetto I find mention of a Fray Antonio de Sotomayor, who served as the confessor to King Philip IV of Spain before becoming Grand Inquisitor of Spain. This Sotomayor served as the dedicatee of a work by Don Juan de Quinones, which argued that Jewish men menstruate. (For more in this topic of Jewish men menstruating see David S. Katz’s essay “Shylock's gender: Jewish male menstruation in early modern England” in the Review of English Studies 50(1999): 440-462) Sotomayor headed the Inquisition for about a decade until 1643. Apparently he is remembered in history as being one of the more moderate members of the Spanish Inquisition at least compared to his successor Diego de Arce Reinoso.

Just Say No to Polytheism: Why it is Important to Believe in a Singular Non-Physical Deity (Part III)

Part I, II

My intention is far from picking on Christianity, even pagan Christianity. My real interest and the reason why I am writing this are those Jews who have the hypocrisy to attack Christianity while holding on to doctrines that are equally as problematic as the Trinity or the Incarnation. There is no way easier to have yourself thrown out of the Jewish community, whether it is the Haredi community or the most liberal Reform community than to imply an openness to the Trinity. If this was more than just politics, we would expect equal thoroughness in going after certain other doctrines. These problematic doctrines are closely related to the Jewish mystical tradition, particularly that of Kabbalah. This is not to say that all mysticism or all Kabbalah is bad; statements have to be taken one by one and judged before the bar of monotheism and those that fail must be cast aside.

The early mystical text Shiur Koma (Song of Ascent) was listed by Maimonides as an idolatrous book because it offers measurements of God’s body. For our purpose, it is not enough to reinterpret Shiur Koma as a mystical allegory that is not meant to be taken literally. Our apologist would still have to explain how Shiur Koma serves to spread monotheist ideas more than it does to give people the idea that God has some sort of body, even an elevated preternatural one. If this person really believed that Shiur Koma was just an allegory he would have the good grace to recognize that, as with any explanation that requires more explaining than the thing it is trying to explain, it should be dropped. Thus we can assume that any Jew who actively supports Shiur Koma is either an open or closeted corporalist, thus a pagan, or is demonstrably lacking in proper monotheistic zeal. One way or another, such a person should not be allowed to hold any position of respect and authority within the Jewish community. Just as we would not allow someone who believed that God, in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, possessed a human body.

There is a whole body of early medieval Jewish mystical literature known as Merkavah texts. These texts deal with ascents into the heavenly realms by the use of various mystical names. They are premised on the notion of the heavens as a realm that can be traversed and that one can even reach the inner sanctum where God “dwells.” While one can reinterpret this as something innocuous, there is no doubting the inescapable premise that the divine realms are a place that can be conquered through the right secret knowledge. The moment you allow this you turn Judaism from a rational ethical religion to a magical and hence a pagan religion.

Maimonides’ Guide to the Perplexed is often blamed for the mass apostasy in Spain. The Guide was quite popular in Spain, but so was the Zohar, a body of mystical texts attributed to Rabbi Shimon b. Yochai and is the main source for the concept of Sephirot. Now I ask you what is more likely to get people to sincerely convert to Christianity, a book like the Guide that takes one of the most hard-line stances imaginable against God being in any way physical or a book like the Zohar that suggests that God might have different parts to him? This is ultimately the same sort of territory opened up by the Trinity. Abraham Abulafia made the argument that the belief in Sephirot was worse than the Trinity as the Christians only had three persons in their godhead and not ten. It is not for nothing that early modern Christian Hebraists were so interested in the Zohar and the concept of Sephirot. If you accept Sephirot than you have no intellectual reason to reject the Trinity. In fact, the Trinity can easily be worked into the Sephirot. God the Father could be the three highest Sephirot, Keter, Chochma, and Binah. The Holy Spirit could be six of the lower Sephirot. Jesus would then be the Sephira of Malchut. Malchut is special because it is the one Sephira that directly interacts with the physical world, a Kabbalistic version of the Incarnation. So what sort of person would support a book like the Zohar? Someone whose primary concern is not defending strict monotheism.

Zoheric concepts are developed into some of their worst features in the thought of Isaac Luria. Luria postulated an elaborate creation story in which the divine vessels were damaged in the very act of creation, leaving human beings with the task of tikkun olam, healing the world. At the heart of this theology are the notions that God is in some sense “imperfect” and in “need” of human aid to make himself perfect once again and that human beings have the power to affect the divine.

While books like Shiur Koma, Merkavah texts, Zohar and the Lurianic corpus are held in high esteem by most in the Haredi world, the group that has done the most to popularize such texts has been Chabad. This makes Chabad a logical target for someone like me who believes that such books, for all intents and purposes, advocate paganism. In addition, Chabad has its own sacred text, Tanya, which features many of the same problems as these other texts. So what do we assume about our Rabbi Eli Brackman, the Chabad rabbi at Oxford mentioned previously? If his interests are really in the realm of ethical monotheism than he would be spending his time trying to pass along the philosophy of Saadiah Gaon, Judah Ha-Levi and Maimonides. He would not be spending his time with Tanya. For that matter why, considering that Chabad has more and more become not just a side issue for Chabad Jews but the central issue of their Judaism, is Rabbi Brackman identifying himself with Chabad? Now Rabbi Brackman has denied having any polytheist intent; this leaves the conclusion that either Rabbi Brackman is just a closeted pagan or that he fails to appreciate the gravity of the situation, a common failing of so-called monotheists.

In conclusion, I admit that I have not offered a thorough discussion of Jewish mysticism nor do I claim to be an expert in the field. This is a more formal version of the challenge that I touched upon earlier and I hope that this could the start of future dialogue. My challenge to Rabbi Brackman or anyone else who wishes to defend Kabbalah in general and Chabad specifically is not whether they can offer acceptable interpretations of the texts in question but whether these texts offer something to ethical monotheism that can justify tolerating them in light of the very obvious heterodox lines of thought inherent to them.

Milton Friedman on the Phil Donahue Show 1979

Here is a clip of the late libertarian economist Milton Friedman on the Phil Donahue show in 1979. The main issue under discussion was a proposed government bailout of Chrysler. (It is funny how some things do not change in thirty years.) I would like to thank my cousin for sending this clip to me. I challenge anyone to watch the full program and come back and say that libertarianism does not offer a coherent and logical way out of our economic predicament.