My Literacy Narrative: An Interview

Last year I gave an interview for the Digital Archive of Literacy Narratives (DALN), which is a project put out by Ohio State to collect interviews about people talking about gaining literacy in various fields. Most obviously, we talk about reading literacy, but this project also wishes to study computer and internet literacy. I suspect that this archive will prove of interest to future historians as they look at the first generation to be raised on computers and the internet.

My experience with reading and the role of books, computers and the internet in my life, become launching pads for a variety of issues familiar to readers of the this blog, including Judaism, History and Asperger syndrome. I talk more directly about my personal biography than I do on this blog so that might be of interest to those wishing to learn more about me as a person. Readers of this blog, who have not met me in person, might find the pair of video clips of me speaking to be of interest to see what I am like in real life. One of the major issues with Asperger syndrome is that it affects not only how I think, but also my physical mannerisms, how I move and talk. A number of friends have commented on the difference between talking to me in person and reading me in print. I would be curious as to the opinion of readers on this.

So after seeing me, what do you see me as, leader of the free world, criminal mastermind or eccentric professor?

The Palestinian Position Requires the Demonization of Israel

In my exchanges with Off the Derech, I have been arguing for the importance of maintaining the sensibility as much as possible that other people may hold different beliefs, these beliefs may be wrong, even manifestly so, but that this does not take away from the legitimacy of the person advocating these beliefs. While I am perfectly willing to defend the right of Palestinians to oppose the State of Israel and even to peacefully protest Israeli speakers, by attempting to disrupt Michael Oren's speech at the UC of Irvine, they had crossed a line to denying the social right to hold pro-Israel views. Thus these students demonstrated an unwillingness to distinguish between legitimate and illegitimate opposing views. This makes them a radical threat not just to Israel but to the free society as a whole.

I just came across a good example of this in an Al-Jezeerah op-ed by Khalid Amayreh titled "Michael Oren: Sorry, But You Represent a Nazi State." Amayreh defends the actions the UC of Irvine students and encourages his readers to engage in similar actions by arguing that Ambassador Oren is a war criminal not entitled to free speech, but only a war crimes trial. I am not interested here in the back and forth as to whether these charges are true. What I will point out is the implications of this war criminal line of defense. Amayreh's position takes it as a given that not only is Israel a Nazi State and Ambassador Oren a war criminal, but that there can be no possible legitimate contrary opinion. (Notice that I am not throwing a similar charge back by denying that reasonable can believe that Israel is a criminal State.) There are consequences to such a belief. It shuts down the possibility of any peaceful exchange of ideas and the chance that people on different sides of this issue can agree to disagree and live in peace, thus creating a state of societal war, which will likely turn into physical war.

One can support Israel and not automatically be tied to demonizing the Palestinian cause. I support a two-state solution (either with Jordan or the West Bank and Gaza as a Palestinian State). I actually care about Palestinian rights. They deserve to be compensated by the State of Israel and the Arab States that forced them into refugee camps. They should be made citizens of the countries in which they reside. More importantly, Palestinians, Arabs, and Muslims are invited to take part in this dialogue as equal partners. I may disagree with them, but I am willing to accept the legitimacy of their viewpoints.

The Palestinian side, as it is argued even by "moderates," requires the demonization of Israel. If Israel had the right to exist in 1948 then the Arab States were in the wrong for fighting the '48 war and bear primary responsibility for the Palestinian refugee problem. If Israel had the right to fight the Six Day War then they gain at least some legitimacy for being in the West Bank and Gaza. Israel would no longer be an aggressive occupying power and would have the right to negotiate their exit from all or part of the territories as moral equals. This would undermine any legitimacy for armed insurrection against Israel. This would leave the Palestinians as a criminal and terrorist cause. As a non-State, they have no inherent legitimacy to be engaging in violence in the first place. States can go to war while admitting that the other side has some legitimacy. For the Palestinians, either Israelis are Nazis or the Palestinians must confess to being terrorists and throw away their own legitimacy.  

Thus the Palestinians and the rest of the Arab world do not have the option of engaging in a discussion of equals that allows for the legitimacy of both sides. Their cause has been built from the beginning on an exclusivist claim to being right. To surrender on that now would be to admit wrong and moral responsibility. They would have to come before the world, admit their crimes and beg for mercy.  

Letter from Michael Makovi to Dan McLeroy

Our friend Michael Makovi took the opportunity of my previous post on Mr. Dan McLeroy of the Texas school board. To be clear, as someone who teaches history, I do not support the secular narrative of modernity and much of my efforts in teaching modern history are to debunk this view. I particularly support Makovi's argument about the role of civil liberties at different levels of government. I have used a similar argument about a sliding scale of civil liberties before. In essence I become less Libertarian the further down I go in government. For example while I support the legalization of drugs and prostitution, I would support the right of individual neighborhoods to ban such activity. In fact I would wish to live in such a neighborhood. I am willing to allow Kiryat Joel and New Square to run their own little "Jewish Calvinist Geneva's" and even to ban television and English newspapers.

Mr. McLeroy,

I read with interest the article "How Christian Were the Founders?" in the New York Times. As an Orthodox Jew, I largely agree with the general tenor of your opinions. I wish to make a few remarks, however, quibbling on some of what you and your colleagues say and hold.

I. Distinction Between Facts and Opinions

First, I believe we have to make a distinction between teaching history and teaching opinions. It is one thing to teach the unbiased and objective fact THAT the Framers and Founders were religious. It is an objective fact that the king of England viewed the Revolutionary War as a Presbyterian Revolution; it is an objective fact that New England Congregationalist sermons advocating revolution against Britain, printed as pamphlets, outnumbered all other publications in America, religious or otherwise, four-to-one. It is also an objective fact that the principles of federalism and democracy were derived by John Calvin and Heinrich Bullinger and others from the Bible, and that John Locke adopted these concepts and secularized them, and that Calvin and Locke together inspired the American Revolution. (See the cartoon "An Attempt to Land a Bishop in America".)

Everything I've just said is objective fact. However, while it is indisputable THAT Locke relied on Calvin, it is something wholly else to say that WE must rely on Calvin ourselves, or even Locke for that matter. Similarly, while it is an indisputable fact that Benjamin Franklin criticized Thomas Paine's denial of individual Divine Providence, it is something wholly else to argue that WE must agree with Franklin over Paine.

My point is that we must be careful to teach indisputable historical facts, and eschew offering our own opinions of what individuals ought to believe. I believe that public schools must teach the Christian past of America, not because I am myself a Christian (on the contrary, I am in fact an Orthodox Jew), but rather, because it is simply an unassailable historical fact that America has a Christian past. Let the public schools teach objective facts, and let students choose for themselves what to believe. If students wish to become Christians, that is their prerogative. But if students such as myself will choose otherwise (I have and will remain a Jew), that is in turn their prerogative.

Similarly, then, I would oppose teaching creationism in biology class. This is not because I, as an Orthodox Jew, disagree with creationism; I do in fact, on quite religious grounds, reject creationism and instead embrace evolution, but that is not the point. Rather, I oppose teaching creationism in biology class because creationism is a religious belief, not a scientific one. If you wish you teach the scientific objections to evolution, then that certainly is admissible in a biology class. But to teach religious principles in a science class is inexcusable. Rather, religious principles should be taught in a philosophy class. And even that, students should be taught the fact THAT many religious Christians advocate creationism. Creationism can be taught very accurately and faithfully, but it should be taught as a belief that some hold, not as a belief that one must hold. Similarly, Judaism and Christianity can be taught in dispassionate objection fashions, with students being told what these two religions say, without students being told to take any particular stance. The data will be provided to students but the conclusions will be their own. I, for example, am perfectly aware of what scientists say about evolution, and what creationists say in reply. Having all the relevant data at my disposal, I have chosen to stake my claim with evolution, on both scientific and religious grounds. (Again, my embrace of evolution is quite religious in nature. See, for example, Rabbi Chanan Morrison, "Noah: The Age of the Universe." Rabbi Morrison follows the approach of Rabbi Avraham Yitzhak ha-Kohen Kook, one of the greatest rabbis of recent times, and revered by both the American Modern Orthodox as well as by the Israeli far-right nationalist "settlers". Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch of 19th-century Germany, arguably THE father of Modern Orthodox Judaism, has a similar approach.)

Therefore, the proper understanding of the First Amendment depends on societal consensus. If the society is wholly and entirely Christian, then the separation of church and state will mean only that the government cannot coerce one particular Christian church; neither Catholicism nor Protestantism may be supported by the government. However, Judaism might be seen as entirely beyond the pale, and subject to coercion and punishment. That is, religious tolerance is relative; one may tolerate other Christians but not non-Christians.

Rabbi Menahem ha-Meiri of 13th-century Provence, France, is famous for tolerating Christians and Muslims and saying that in Jewish law, a Christian or Muslim is like a Jew, and that the commandment to love one's neighbor as himself includes them. But even Rabbi Menahem ha-Meiri declared that atheists could NOT be tolerated, because in his view, anyone who denied reward and punishment was liable to murder and steal and commit crimes against society. Today, however, things might be different, and one might rightly follow the general direction of Rabbi Menahem ha-Meiri, and based on his own logic, extend his tolerance to include even atheists, as long as they respect the rights of their fellow men and do not commit anti-social crimes. So the separation of church and state is relative, and must be reconsidered anew in every time and place.

II. A Nuanced Understanding of Just What Democracy and Federalism Are

Second, I believe we need to have a nuanced understanding of just what democracy and federalism are. If we search for the roots of democracy, we find them in John Calvin and Heinrich Bullinger and the like, responding to Catholic monarchs and their violation of Protestant sensibilities. We find that all the major ideas of the Calvinists were adopted by John Locke, and that Calvin and Locke together influenced the American revolutionaries. Thus, the cartoon "An Attempt to Land a Bishop in America" could depict revolutionaries holding the books of Locke and Sidney and hurling Calvin at a Brit.

What, then, is the difference between Calvin and Locke? The chief difference, I believe, is that whereas the Calvinists and Puritans were quite confident in their own religious beliefs, by contrast, Locke wrote a treatise on religious toleration. It has been put that Samuel Rutherford wrote the greatest work in favor of civil liberties and the greatest work in favor of religious intolerance. The difference between Calvin and Locke is not in their political ideas of how the government ought to uphold rights and liberties. Rather, they disagreed on just what those liberties and rights were.

In premodern Jewish societies, for example, religiosity was taken for granted, and so murder and Shabbat violation were equally heinous, and were equally violations of morality and crimes against society. However, Orthodox Jewish authorities have recognized that nowadays, most Jews are lamentably - but through no fault of their own - ignorant of Judaism, and so one cannot view Shabbat violation the same way anymore. The non-religious will simply not view efforts at curtailing their religious liberties the same way as they once would. The Orthodox authorities will still wholeheartedly advocate Shabbat observance, but they will not longer coerce it. On the other hand, however, everyone still agrees that murder is heinous, and so everyone will agree that murderers must be punished.

I have made this argument a few times; see, for example, my

1) "The Death-Penalty in a Theocratic Israel"

2) "The Death-Penalty in a Theocratic Israel, Part 2"

My point is that democracy and federalism has NO substantive contents or beliefs. All democracy states is that the government can coerce observance of fundamentals of morality but that it cannot coerce anything else. But just what are the fundamentals of morality? For Calvin, this included every little tit and tittle of belief or practice of Calvinism, and so Calvinists could oppress Catholics just as Catholics had oppressed Protestants. But for Locke, the fundamentals of morality had to be reduced to some sort of lowest-common-denominator, viz. "life, liberty, and the pursuit of property". Any society can have whatever list of morals it desires.

Thus, one can have a Jewish democracy or a Hindu democracy or a secular democracy no less than one may have a Christian democracy. The innovation of democracy is that there is rule of law, that the government has the obligation to uphold rights and liberties and laws, and that the government is subject to the same laws as the citizens. Furthermore, on any issue which is not clearly spelled out (for example, the Bible says nothing about proper taxation rates), the will of the people prevails. But this is very subjective; one society will have a different conception of morality than another.

Therefore, for example: a Biblical Jewish theocracy might enforce Shabbat observance, while a contemporary Jewish theocracy would not. However, both Biblical and contemporary Jewish theocracies might ban Christian missionary activities in Israel, since Israelis today, even secular ones, are in general agreement that missionizing in Israel is unacceptable. If, please G-d, a religious revival in Israel occurs, then perhaps Shabbat observance will again become the norm, and it will once again become the government's prerogative to enforce.

Christians today are perfectly entitled to present their views in the public sphere, and let their ideas be weighed in the marketplace of ideas. If, for example, Christians can convince America that abortion is murder, then abortion can become illegal and punishable. But if Americans reject that abortion is such a moral fundamental, then the Christians will lose their case.

This brings us to another point of American history: if I understand the argument of Professor Barry Alan Shain's The Myth of American Individualism: The Protestant Origins of American Political Thought, then we must realize the following: government coercion becomes more conscionable the smaller the given society is. That is, it is more justifiable for a CITY to coerce than for a STATE, and more justifiable for a STATE to coerce than a NATION. The smaller the entity, the more government coercion and societal moral censure begin to become indistinguishable. If an entire city is staunchly Protestant, then it is very justifiable for the city to force Protestantism on its inhabitants. Government coercion and general non-coercive societal moral censure become one and the same. But as the society becomes larger, i.e. when we deal with states and even more with nations, then this becomes less clear. Perhaps one state is Calvinist and another is Catholic, for example. Government coercion becomes exposed and susceptible to the argument that the government is far-away in Rome, judging those alien to it. Why should someone in California be beholden to the views of someone in Washington? In a smaller society, one may leave and relocate if he is displeased. If you live in Meah Shearim, an Ultra-Orthodox neighborhood in Jerusalem, then you cannot blame your neighbors when they try to coerce you to observe Jewish law; after all, you chose to live in that neighborhood!

But if someone in Meah Shearim tries to force Jewish law onto someone in Tel Aviv (which is mostly secular), then this is evil. John Locke's concept of the consent of the government, especially tacit consent, becomes more real and authentic with smaller communities than with extended nations or empires. If I understand Professor Shain, then he has made this argument, but in any case, I independently made the same argument myself before I ever saw Shain; see my article, "Religious Coercion, or On John Locke and the Kehilla's Right to Assess Tzedaqa."

To return to the First Amendment: the First Amendment's separation of church and state must be understood as applying to different societies in different ways. Until the 14th Amendment was passed, the Bill of Rights applied only to the national government, but not to state governments. Thus, the Federal government could not respect any religions, but individual states could respect any given religion they wanted to. I think the principle is that the smaller the society in question, the greater its ability to coerce residents. In a small town, a fantastic and incredible amount of coercion is conscionable.

My point in saying all this, is to prove the following: it is one thing for you to advocate Christianity and Christian beliefs and principles, but it is something wholly else for you to force them on someone else. For you to coerce others to believe in Christianity, you must grapple with two factors:

1) The general status quo today; the more people agree with you, the more you can coerce the minority, but the more people disagree with you, the more you must acknowledge and respect their convictions and resort to persuasion rather than to coercion;

2) The fact that coercion is more valid in smaller communities than in larger ones. The towns of New England were extremely religious, and Protestantism was taken for granted in them as a basic fact of morality and proper society. But these towns did not try to coerce people in other states to believe like them. They instead used persuasion, not coercion.

As I said, this forces us to reconsider the First Amendment in two ways:

1) The separation of church and state depends on just exactly what "church" means to that time and place. In the 18th-century, perhaps this separation put all Christian churches on an equal level but condemned non-Christians as beyond the pale. Today, things might be different.

2) The First Amendment applied to the Federal government, but not to the states. The smaller the society in question, the more it can coerce citizens, and the more liberty can become positive and not merely negative.

Therefore, while it is an unassailable fact that America's roots are Christian, it is something wholly else to claim that therefore, America should be Christian today. You should teach students only the objective historical facts, and nothing more. Let me give an analogy: On Wikipedia, one may not give his own personal views, but one can certainly objectively describe another's views. Therefore: I may NOT,on Wikipedia, record Jewish beliefs as the truth. However, I may write that according to such-and-such a book by so-and-so the rabbi, such-and-such is what Judaism says the truth is. Therefore: the proper course, I believe, is to teach students only the objective historical facts. (I am speaking of public schools; private schools may teach whatever they want, since there is Locke-ian consent of the governed. If you don't like what the school teaches, you may leave.) Once everyone is armed with the historical facts, they may make whatever decisions they desire. If the American people then choose to make America into a Christian society, then that is their prerogative.

As an aside, I believe that everything I've written has proven that democracy and theocracy do not contract at all. As I said, democracy is a METHOD of enforcing morality, but it contains no concepts of morality itself, except for the beliefs that the government is accountable to the people and that all people are equal. Other than this, democracy is a METHOD of governance, but is utterly devoid of any actual philosophical or moral beliefs. Thus, you can have a Christian democracy, a Jewish democracy, or a secular democracy, for example.

By the way: the Declaration of Independence says far more than just "the laws of Nature and Nature's God". The last paragraph of the Declaration discusses Divine Providence, and as Professor Jeffry Morrison (Assistant Professor of Government, Regent University; Faculty, James Madison Memorial Fellowship Foundation, Washington, D.C.) shows in his essay, "Political Theology in the Declaration of

Independence," that the last paragraphs of the Declaration is perfectly consonant with Calvinism. According to Morrison, the first paragraph of the Declaration appealed to deists, but the last paragraph appealed to very religious Calvinists.

Thank you, and sincerely,

Michael Makovi

Formerly of Silver Spring, MD

Now a student of Yeshivat Hesder Petah Tiqwa (literally: "The

IDF-Affiliated Orthodox-Jewish Theological-Seminary of Petah Tiqwa") in Petah Tiqwa, Israel

Young Earth Creationists Want Your History Textbooks Too

Historian Russell Shorto has a long article in the New York Times magazine about school board debates as to how to teach the issue of the religious intentions of the founding fathers. Did the founding fathers wish this to be a "Christian country?" Shorto is one of the leading historians today in understanding the complex role of religion in the scientific revolution and the rise of modernity. I would have liked to have seen more of him explaining to readers why this issue defies simple ideological verdicts of yes America was founded as a Christian nation or no it was not. Instead, Shorto focuses on the Texas school board and its leading conservative, Dan McLeroy. McLeroy wishes to make sure that children learn about how Ronald Reagan restored national confidence, Phyllis Schlafly, the Heritage Foundation, the Moral Majority, and the NRA. He is also a young-Earth creationist, who believes that the Bible is the ultimate source of our legal principles. (Why can't young Earthers just stick to destroying science and leave history alone?)

Those of my readers not from the State of Texas might think to breathe a sigh of relief; McLeroy is not on your State's school board so he does not affect you. Here is the problem, the major textbook publishing companies, for a variety of reasons, take their cues from the Texas school system. They will publish their history textbooks with Texas in mind and these textbooks are then used throughout the country, including a school near you. Let us be very clear. McLeroy, through his power of blackmail, has control over what sort of history your children will be learning and he is not just out to try to teach creationism to your children; he is also trying to teach a Christian apologist narrative. Imagine if Artscroll and Rabbi Berel Wein were being put in charge of writing history textbooks. Do you believe that McLeroy cares about a historical method or any critical analysis of history?

As a Libertarian and a follower of J. S. Mill, this is a good example of why I do not support government-funded public schools. I ask all of you, dear readers, who believe in government-controlled public schools, how can you trust the government to not abuse this power to ideologically indoctrinate your children? Would you trust the government to run the media? Government-controlled public education means that people like McLeroy will have control over your children and there is nothing you can do about it. I have every intention of making sure that no young-Earth creationists have any influence in the education of my children by sending any future children of mine to a carefully picked private school. (If need be, I will homeschool my children myself.) Every parent in this country deserves this opportunity and should not be forced into the hands of McLeroy simply because they cannot afford to pay twice over for their children's education.

As a history teacher, this is a good example of why I refuse to use official textbooks. I know that any official textbook has been held hostage to the interests of non-historians, out simply to score ideology points. Thus it is hopelessly tainted. I will stick to history books written by historians and answerable only to historians.

The Turn to Messianism (Part III)

(Part I, II)


To turn to Islam, this issue of a redeemer to come at the End of Days, the Mahdi, the rightly guided one, as he is known in Islam, lies at the fault line of the major divide that exists within Islam, that of the Sunnis and the Shi'i. According to Shi'i Islam only the descendents of Ali are allowed to assume the leadership of the Muslim community. They therefore rejected the line of Caliphs from the Umayyad line. In time this political split also came to include matters of religious law and theology as each side developed their own schools of thought.

One might easily think that the Sunni Islam would not have a concept of a Messiah as it has little need little need for a redeemer figure. Unlike Judaism and Shi'i Islam, the Sunnis have no political reasons for promulgating the concept of a redeemer and unlike both Judaism and Christianity Islam as a whole does not have any theological reasons for a redeemer. Islam does not have a concept a Temple nor of the destruction of a Temple. There is no theology of exile and by extension there can be no theology of redemption. Islam does not have animal sacrifices to be restored. Islam does not even have a concept of "Original Sin" for which people need to be redeemed. One is already redeemed through membership in the community. (See Hava Lazarus Yafeh. "Is there a concept of redemption in Islam?" Types of Redemption pg. 168.)The Sunni historical experience has much in common with the Catholic experience; they are both historical victors. Over the course of a single century following the death of Mohammed, Islam went from a religion of tribesmen in Arabia to armies marching into Francia, only to be defeated at the Battle of Tours in 732. The entire Near East and the African side of the Mediterranean basin, the Parthian Empire and much of the former Roman Empire, was now part of the Islamic world. In contrast, at this point there is still no Christian Europe. Nearly a century after this Charlemagne will still be fighting (and forcibly converting) pagans in Northern Germany. The Norsemen to the north and the Slavs to the east are must distinctively, at this point, not Christians. In essence, Sunni Islam has a better claim than even Catholicism for their religion being manifestly true as historical fact for all to see.

Despite all this and despite the fact that the Koran makes no mention of a Mahdi, the concept of a Mahdi, the rightfully guided one, exists even in Sunni Islam even though it is not a central doctrine. According to the fourteenth century Sunni historian, Ibn Khaldun:

It has been (accepted) by all Muslims in every epoch, that at the end of time a man from the family (of the Prophet) will without fail make his appearance, one who will strengthen Islam and make justice triumph. Muslims will follow him, and he will gain domination over the Muslim realm. He will be called the Mahdi. Following him, the Antichrist will appear, together with all the subsequent signs of the Day of Judgment. After the Mahdi, Jesus will descend and kill the Antichrist. Or, Jesus will descend together with the Mahdi, and help him kill (the Antichrist), and have him as the leader of his prayers. (The Mugaddimah vol. II pg. 156.)

Unlike the case of Sunnism, the concept of a Mahdi is crucial for Shi'i. As with Judaism, Shi'i Muslims must contend with the fact that they are a people defined in terms of their being on the losing side of history. They are the faction in Islam that rejected Umayyads, the first Islamic Empire. Their leader, Ali, was assassinated. Ali's son and heir, Husayn, was defeated and killed at the battle of Karbala. The Shi'i managed to eventually to help the Abbasids, who were descended from the family of Mohammad's uncle Hussein, take power, but the Abbasids betrayed them by declaring their support for Sunnism. Shi'i Islam therefore requires a redeemer not only to reverse these political misfortunes, but also to give meaning to their subjugation so that, instead of being a group of outcasts refusing to accept the verdict of history, they can be that small group of the faithful, beloved by God, that kept the faith even when everything seemed to stand against them. The issue of a Mahdi or of an Imam would break Shi'i Islam apart. There were splits in over the fifth and the seventh imams, leading to three major groups of Shi'i. Most Shiites recognized Muhammad al Bakir. There are also Zaydi Shiites who accepted Muhammad's brother, Zayid ibn 'Ali, as the legitimate imam. There was another split after the death of the sixth Imam, Ja'far al-Sadiq (d. 765). The al-Musawiyya followed the Mahdism of al-Sadq's son Musa al-Kazim (d. 799-800). They accepted the succession of eleven Alid descendants as legitimate imams. The last of these imams was Hasan al-Askari (873-78). Twelver Shiism believes that Hasan's son, Mohammad went up to heaven where he dwells as the Hidden Imam, awaiting the End of Days, when he will return to the world.

What should be very clear from this discussion is that there are two sides to Messianism, a counter-political and a side that is very much of this world and its politics. Messianism is a counter to worldly politics by those who have lost the political struggle and an effort to minimize the significance of that lose. This very rejection of worldly politics also, ironically enough, makes Messianism a distinctively political doctrine. It serves to offer a form of worldly politics for those who would otherwise not have it.

The Turn Toward Messianism (Part II)

(Part I)


This two sided millennialist heritage was passed on to medieval Western Christendom. Would Christ return to Earth in human form to reign over the physical world along with the saints in their exalted but still physical bodies? Despite the effort of the established Church to do away with such dreams of a kingdom of this world as evidence of a Judaizing influence, such beliefs would continue to manifest themselves along the periphery of the Christian theological and political establishment. The most important of these traditions comes out of the work of Abbot Joachim of Fiore. Fiore's actual writing and pseudepigrapha would continue to explicitly be at the center of almost any apocalyptic speculation through the seventeenth century. If we are to accept Marjorie Reeves, this Joachimite tradition is the engine driving not just the Franciscans, but pretty much everything of consequence in late medieval and Renaissance thought. Even within the established Catholic Church, Joachim hovered along the borders of respectability. There is no attempt to take Joachim head on and denounce his work point blank as heresy, even if the millennialist implications of his work were sidestepped. (Again the analogy to Maimonides is useful. Traditional Jewry found that they could not summarily dismiss Maimonides as he was too important a legalist, his potentially dangerous philosophical beliefs could be side stepped by ignoring his Guide to the Perplexed.) Even while the Church opposed messianism in the form of the millennialist rule of the kingdom of saints, it still accepted some form eschatology, particularly as it involved Antichrist. Joachim turned calculating the arrival of Antichrist into a European wide sport.

Joachimite thought came to be used as the intellectual justification for many of the political revolts, both before and during the Reformation, which dotted the late medieval and Renaissance landscape, such as the Fraticelli, the Taborites and the Munster uprising. As Norman Cohn argued in Pursuit of the Millennium, while medieval Christian millennial movements had a strong social basis to them, they did not arise in those elements of the lower classes with strong social attachments. Instead, they came about among landless peasants, unskilled and journeymen workers lacking social networks to tie them to established society and install in them traditional values.

The Protestant tradition, despite Luther's opposition, would come, by and large, to actively embrace a millennialist program. Many even come to openly embrace Joachim as a prophet and as a proto-Protestant. This is strongly contrasted by the Catholic Church, which even during the upheavals of the Reformation did not turn toward millennialism. In fact the Counter-Reformation solidified the Church's opposition. As a side note I would point out that this Joachimite millennialism plays an important role in Protestant philo-Semitism. Early modern Protestant philo-Semites are consistently also active millennialists. This is not a coincidence in that Jews play an important and even positive role in Joachimite millenarianism. The Jews are going to accept Christ, which will usher in the new era. (See Robert Lerner, The Feast of Saint Abraham: Medieval Millenarians and the Jews)

Why would the established Catholic Church seek, following the Augustine tradition, to distance itself from millennialist thinking, while those on the heterodox periphery and Protestants would embrace this tradition? For the established Catholic Church, millenarianism is both useless and threatening. The Church was the political victory. The Church might be threatened by Arian Goths, the Holy Roman Emperor, the king of France, Protestants and other manifestations of Antichrist, but this is not to question the narrative of a victorious Church. The truth of the Church could be treated as obvious fact proven by history. Forget about what you might believe about the disappearance of a body in first century Judea, Constantine converting to Christianity, and the Church taking over the Roman Empire are unchallengeable historical facts. (Constantine's Donation would prove to be a different story.) Church anti-Jewish polemics are a good example of this sort of reasoning. Any claim to needing another political victory would be a denial of this victory and a call for the overthrow of the Church.

Joachim was fairly explicit in this regard; the Church was to be reformed according to the new Law of the Holy Spirit, creating a new Church order. (The Franciscans would famously embrace this as a prophecy of the coming of their order. How even the moderate Franciscans managed to avoid being killed as heretics is one of the great mysteries of medieval history.) Those outside of the established Catholic Church had no such qualms of maintaining Church victory. On the contrary they had to justify themselves in the face of this Catholic supremacy. Similarly, Protestant theology developed with the consciousness of not having a Constantine type victory. Over a hundred years of religion wars in Europe gained Protestantism some regions in Germany and France, England, Scotland, the Netherlands and Scandinavia. There would be no glorious march to Rome to strip the altar at St. Peter's. (Rome's sack in 1527 came at the hands of the Catholic Charles V.) Even within Protestantism itself there was no unifying accepted faith as Lutherans went against Calvinists and Anabaptists. What else but the return of Jesus could prove the truth of a given Protestant sect?

The Asperger Fiction Reader: Not a Contradiction in Terms

From the moment I started reading Michael Makovi's blog, I suspected that he had Asperger syndrome. This was someone who wrote about theory and was willing to follow theory to its practical implications without concern with making friends. His focus on political theory, particularly within the context of the minutia of early modern history, as opposed to practical policy could not simply be a coincidence. This was someone who did not fit into the obvious political and religious categories and who clearly formulated his view of the world from reading and not from some social group. Once he started talking about his failures with women, I was convinced. So I asked him if he was familiar with Asperger syndrome and pointed him to the Simon Baron Cohen quiz. Makovi has now posted his results. Normal people usually score a sixteen. People on the spectrum usually score above thirty. Makovi scored a 37. I would like to hereby welcome him to the club. I take this as a testament to my ever increasing power to infect people with Asperger syndrome. I usually have to bite people, I guess now I can infect people through a blogospheric evil eye. Mothers lock up your children and be afraid; I am autism and I am dangerous.

The Baron Cohen quiz is useful, though I have one objection to it. It assumes that people on the spectrum would have a problem with fiction. The quiz asks how well the following sentiments fit:

20. When I'm reading a story, I find it difficult to work out the characters' intentions.
21. I don't particularly enjoy reading fiction.

The idea here is that fiction requires the reader to consider other people's motivations and emotions. People with Asperger syndrome are not supposed to have a theory of mind, to understand that other people think differently from them, and have a difficult time putting themselves in other people's shoes. Our Asperger book club in Columbus was started and received funding to study the relationship between Asperger syndrome and fiction reading, precisely on the assumption that we would have a problem with fiction. One of the ground rules, which we were placed under, was that we had to choose works of fiction for the club and could not do non-fiction. Ironically enough they were not able to put together a separate control group of neurotypicals to see how our reactions to the reading material differed from theirs. They could not round up a group of neurotypicals to participate in a book club.

I certainly have not done a full study of this, but, in my personal experience, it is not so simple. I, for one, do enjoy fiction. I would argue that my interest in reading is not despite my Asperger syndrome, but is one of the ways that I manifest Asperger behavior. Obviously, I take to books more easily than people. Books are much better friends than people; they are easier to decode and you can open and close them as it suits you. Books do not misunderstand you and try to hurt you. Fiction provides precisely the sort of "human" relationship that I can deal with. The motivations of characters are written in words that I can decipher, as opposed to facial expressions.

Among the members of the group, there were quite a number of readers. Even one of the more "non-readers" is a big Tom Clancy fan. I would argue that Clancy is a good example of fiction that would be a good fit for Aspergers. It has lots of technical details, plot-driven stories, and characters whose motives are fairly simple to follow; there are the bad guys out to unleash some global calamity and the good guys trying to stop them. There are a number of hardcore science fiction and fantasy fans in the group. Again these are types of fiction that would seem to be very well suited for the Asperger mind. The focus is less on forcing the reader to grapple with figuring out the character's emotions and motivations. Instead, we have world building, where the reader gets to explore the rules of a different world and what makes it work in all its technical detail, and an action centered story, where people do things.

I am not suggesting that all Aspergers like fiction, let alone Tom Clancy, science fiction and fantasy. I do wish to argue that the fiction/non-fiction model is too simplistic. There are types of fiction that may appeal to Aspergers precisely because of their Asperger syndrome. Thus I would amend the questions on reading from simply a matter of whether someone likes fiction to whether they like non-plot oriented fiction in which the point is to guess at character motivations that are never explicitly put onto the page.

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 …)

The Social Free Discourse of Opponents

I have been engaged in a back and forth with Off the Derech in regards to my last post. I argued that the actions of the anti-Israel students at UC of Irvine are the rejection even of dialogue let alone peace. They are the charge that representatives of the State of Israel are satanic. This is not an enemy that you can ever hope to talk to. Furthermore, there is the implicit issue of intimidation. Those students are not only refusing to engage in the dialogue of a free society, but they are also holding the rest of society hostage. This makes them a threat not just to Israel, but to liberal society at large. OTD objected to my defining Israel as a Jewish State on the grounds that Judaism is a religion. Furthermore, he argued:

I think your analysis of the students is extremely unfair. But calling them a threat to liberal society at large and butchering their argument by claiming they think Israel is "satanic" is a bit rich. You don't agree with them, but can't you show some respect? As some people like to say, "can't we all just get along?" From their perspective they're doing the right thing (as you are from yours) and don't they get to be judges by their own criteria, rather than their opponent's?

Jews are both a religion and an ethnic group/culture. Israel was founded as a homeland for ethnic Jews. Germany also has had their own right of return laws used for ethnic Germans living in Eastern Europe. I see nothing racist in this. This does not preclude equal rights for non-ethnic German citizens of Germany. Yes, there is a religious component to Israel, which I personally oppose. I think Israel is a good example of the sort of trouble that even a well-meaning secular liberal state will get itself into if it does not have a firm separation between Church and State.

One of the things that my readers know about me is that even if you disagree with me, I operate according to specific principles and will operate according to these principles even when they go against me. I would say the same thing if Muslims, joined by Christians and Jews, were to do to Richard Dawkins what was done to Ambassador Oren.

For free speech to function in practice, in addition to government protection, there also needs to be a social component where we are inclined to view our intellectual opponents as people who, while wrong, are well-meaning, deserving of dialogue and to be respected for the courage of their convictions. For example, I have my views on health care. I accept that there are reasonable rational and much smarter people who believe very differently. That is ok. We can debate this in the public sphere and I might win or lose. Regardless, I value the process of this open discussion above its ability to give me the results I want. There is a point at which I would shut down this social free discussion (but not the political free speech rights). I cannot possibly freely debate the proposition that I am not acting in good faith as part of this free society. I cannot prove that I am not a member of the Elders of Zion and any serious discussion of this proposition serves to exclude me from the social free society. It would frame me as a "satanic" figure, which knows the TRUTH but rejects it anyway. Thus if my university were to invite David Duke precisely to talk to students about the threat posed by Jews as individuals, I might engage in the sort of tactics used by these students. This is a full-on declaration of war and the consequences are real. It would mean that the university itself had chosen to declare war on its Jewish students. (This is why in general you may have noticed I am so hesitant to launch into ad hominem attacks or anything that challenges the legitimacy even of my opponents.)

Ambassador Oren was not challenging the legitimacy of Muslims to take part in the social free discourse. So what does it mean that these Muslim students acted in such a way as to inhibit his ability to present his ideas? (I would have no objection to peaceful demonstrators outside the building or even people in the hall holding up signs.) It means that they are willing to even come after people, who by all rights should be legitimate opponents. Thus they reject the very distinction between legitimate and illegitimate opposition. This is the breakdown of the free social discourse and a blow to the free society.

How to be an Anti-Israel Activist

Case for Israel Assignment


You are to play the role of one the types of people that Prof. Alan Dershowitz attacks in his book, either a Palestinian activist or a member of the hard left. You are encouraged to make up a name and character for yourself. In this guise you are to respond to one of the arguments that Dershowitz makes in the book. You are free to be as over the top as you wish and to misquote and distort the views of Prof. Dershowitz. If we are going to play the role of anti-Israel activists it is important that we do so accurately.

This response should be 2-3 pages in length and should not require outside research. Pay close attention to the quotations that Dershowitz offers at the beginning of each chapter.

Have fun with this assignment. Keep in mind the Poe law, though; it is impossible to satirize extremists because there will always be someone out there who actually fits the satire.

The Bible as the Political Foundation of the Democratic State: My Response to Dr. Lively IV

Mr. Chinn,

I did not blame the Rwandan genocide on homosexuals.  Once again, you can't trust these "gay" activists to do anything but misrepresent the facts to their political advantage.  The Box Turtle video is heavily edited in true Hitlerian style.  I used the Rwandan genocide only as an example of conduct of which only certain types of people are capable who have such an lack of "feminine" characteristics in their gender balance (vis a vis the principle of male/female duality in Genesis 1:27) that they can commit horrible atrocities without any sense of shame.  If you want to understand the context, see pages 50-56 of my book, which I was lecturing from during that segment of the seminar.  Even if I had accused the Rwandan killers of homosexuality, which I did not, I clearly stated that homosexuals of this type are fortunately very rare and that most homosexuals are not like this.  I also spoke at length about the necessity of treating homosexuals as fellow human beings who happen to suffer from a behavioral problem that the rest of us don't -- but that we all have challenges in life to address.  No one who attended my lectures and listened attentively could reasonably justify capital punishment for homosexuals based solely on my teachings.

I read Rabbi Sacks' editorial and agree with him.  I think his position is closer to mine that to yours, especially in his affirmation of natural rights as they were understood by the founding fathers.  Locke's Second Treatise of Government is precisely the sort of application of Biblical principles to government that I am recommending.

I only yielded on Shaw to make the greater point that my purpose in contacting you was not to advocate a position, but to refer you to a source that was relevant to your research.  I don't concede re Shaw, but am tabling my original assertion pending an eventual review of the source by either one of us.

I don't think you understood my arguments regarding secularism.  I do not argue for religious tests or rituals in government, but for the necessity of a Biblically-informed worldview in the leadership and culture (to the extent that government actively influences culture. I do not argue that atheists cannot be good citizens, just that their worldview cannot produce a healthy orderly society.

I don't think my discussion of Biblical principles is spiritual in the sense that you meant it.  Yes, I believe Scripture must be the final authority in spiritual matters, and I suspect (though I haven't read them) that Maimonides, et al would agree -- as I believe with some confidence based on my limited readings of Thomas Aquinas and Augustine that they would also agree. Neither do I disregard the physical commandment against homosexuality. I start with the physical commandment and the actions of God as stated in Scripture, and, like the authorities you cite, engage in deductive and inductive reasoning to extrapolate the principles.

True, this is also what the "gay" affirming heretics of the "mainline" protestant denominations have done, but that isn't proof that the method is invalid, but merely that someone is wrong in his analysis.

This method of extrapolating and applying Biblical principles is literally the essence of the common-law jurisprudence that undergirds Western Civilization. And its concept of Stare Decisis is the same philosophical assumption inherent in Catholic and Jewish approach to religious authority i.e. that once a matter has been decided by a learned man under God-granted authority, it needn't be contested the next time that same or closely similar matter arises. Why is Maimonides a great authority? Because he invented his own theology independent of the Torah or because he analyzed the meaning of the Torah so brilliantly that other great minds conceded that he was right?

Protestantism arose when great minds became unwilling to accept the conclusions of the religious authorities of their age and began to offer alternative analyses. Granted, it is a tradition that produces a lot of division, but I think its legacy via men like Locke is a vast improvement over the centralized authority of the Holy Roman Empire and is successors.

As for your final comments regarding "homophobia," I still think you're embracing politically correct assumptions in contradiction to your faith and to good logic.

Dr. Scott Lively

My response:

Dr. Lively,  

I do not trust homosexual activists nor do I trust you. For that matter, I do not trust activists in general with any claim that furthers their cause. This is a basic part of the historian's training. We interrogate texts; we can tell when we our sources are being dishonest with us and we can often even make a good guess of what the truth is. Like a good police interrogator, we can take our source and turn his words against him. Your stated position is that you do not blame Rwanda on homosexuals, but simply believe that homosexuality played an important in creating the sort of people who could do such a thing. In an ivory tower of dialectics, I can recognize that between such beliefs. There would even be a distinction if we were to "legally" put homosexuals on trial for causing genocide. That being said, for a lay person on the street there is not going to be a difference. If homosexuality helps create people capable of mass murder than the future safety of the country requires that we round up and imprison homosexuals and if that proves impractical we must kill them. You did not make your arguments in a legal or genocide studies journal. You traveled to Uganda to publically make these statements. I am certainly no gay rights activist, but there is nothing unfair about that video of yours. You cannot play innocent on this one.

As to Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, notice that he openly acknowledges that homosexuals were victims of the Holocaust. He does not advocate rounding up homosexuals, putting them in prison, or even trying to cure them. All that he is interested in doing is to prevent gay rights from turning into a right to go on the offense and blackmailing people of faith. In terms of the role of the Bible in government, I acknowledge that historically the rise of democratic political theory in Europe had a lot to do with the Christian, particularly Protestant, theology of the Early Modern period. Much of my efforts in teaching history go into debunking the secularist narrative that assumes that modernity was a secular project. As I often tell my student, "modernity was a Christian project that had interesting unforeseen consequences." John Locke is a very good example of this. One cannot read Locke without coming to terms with the fact that he is engaged in a Christian project to create a reformed Christian society. My friend Michael Makovi has been blogging on this issue. You might enjoy his work. He recommended an article to me by Michael McVicar on R. J. Rushdoony that I think may offer some context as to where someone like you fits into the liberal tradition.

The fact that the Bible has played an important role in the rise of free societies means that it should be a part of the historical and philosophical discussion; it does not mean that we should be trying to implement biblical law or that we need a society of Bible believers. Liberal Democracy seems to work in Japan and South Korea despite the fact that they are not a Bible believing Christian society. I am glad you recognize that atheists can, as individuals, be good citizens. For me, that is all that is needed. Good law abiding atheists are welcome to join my religion neutral state. They can vote, hold public office and even attempt to convince people that atheism is the truth and that it will lead to a more ethical society. They may be wrong, but I am willing to give them the benefit of the doubt and accept that they came by these beliefs honestly and they are not involved in some satanic conspiracy to destroy society.

As to the influence of modern political correctness on my thought, I plead guilty as charged. I am a product of late twentieth and early twenty-first century American culture. Historians of the future who read my writing will have me quickly pegged. My historical context plays a critical role in explaining what issues interest me and what approaches I take to responding to the issues of my day. I am the son of an Orthodox rabbi, who grew up in Columbus OH and is trying to reconcile the religious sensibilities of his youth and the liberal culture that he has spent his life as a spectator of. This sense of being a spectator is reinforced by my Asperger syndrome. The attempted reconciliation has been to turn to the past toward the medieval rationalism of Maimonides and the classical liberalism of John Locke and J. S. Mill. Maybe I will be of interest to historians of the future as someone, in the twenty-first century, who still managed to be a harbinger of future thought.

How might I have thought about homosexuality if I had lived several decades ago? I probably would have thought a lot less about it since it would not have been a major political issue for my historical context. I probably would have a much stronger visceral reaction against it. For example, despite the fact that polygamy is in the Bible, I still have a strong visceral reaction to the very idea of women taking their turn with the man. I stopped reading Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series once you had the main female characters deciding that they all loved Rand and that therefore they would share him. If I spent time in a society where polygamy was accepted I would probably say that, while polygamy is not my thing, people are free to do it in the privacy of their own homes. (By the way, I do believe that polygamy should be legal even if I do not support government recognition of it and that polygamous couples have the right to anything that the government chooses to give homosexual couples.) In the end, I am guided by principles, principles that have little to do with modern liberalism. If I were really interested in bowing before political correctness I would not be taking the sort of positions that I do. Remember, that within the context of academia, I am what passes for a conservative.

(I think this marks the end of the conversation. It has been fun.)

Why Are the Haredim Holding Up? II

Reuben Seligman responded to Garnel and my comments to his last post:


In my post I said that I don't claim to know all the answers regarding how things changed. However, I can give you some suggestions, by looking at how people make choices (contrary to Ironheart, who believes in brainwashing). I was surprised when you said that as a non-economist you didn't focus on the economic issues, since as a libertarian, you should be focusing on those issues. Remember that people have many goals, economic goals, religious goal, and status goals. Let's first look at the "flipping" phenomenon. Their parents want them to study torah and indeed encourage them to study torah. They then come to the point where they go away to study torah for a year or two. They enjoy that year and they are told by their Rabbeim that they could and should continue that rather than going to college. They realize that they can fit into a community where they will have the status of a "learner" and that they can continue to enjoy a life of study. Yes, they realize that they may be poorer, but as you mentioned, because of the welfare state in both the U.S. and Israel we are currently in a situation where nobody starves. Economists assume that we discount future rewards. That means we value current rewards more than future rewards. It is thus not entirely irrational for a young man to prefer studying torah, rather than going to college, since the status rewards for studying torah are current and the resulting poverty is several years in the future (usually when he has children and his wife cannot work). If this analysis is correct, then parents may be able to pressure their children to choose college by not supporting them (after a certain period) unless they go to college, since that would cause the child to experience current poverty, rather than future poverty.


I will make another suggestion based on an idea that Berman mentions obliquely. Assume that Orthodox Jews want to form a community with other Orthodox Jews. They want to study Torah, participate in shul, and engage in all similar activities. In their community, they obtain status, in part by their activities (knowledge of Torah, piety, etc.), but also by the status of the group in which they are involved. This creates a "free rider" problem in which each person wants to be associated with people who are more committed, not less committed.  The people who are more committed then create barriers so that they don't associate with people who are less committed. These barriers are seen in schools and shidduchim: schools will not admit a child whose parents own a televisions, or are otherwise nonconforming and, by screening prospective marriage partners for their children, parents hope to gain status. A young person can gain status by showing that he is more committed (Berman mentions that as the reason why people continuing to study, rather than work). Thus, while studying and not working are not financially rewarding they provide status rewards for the family, as well as the person studying. (Note that if there are fewer barriers, there will be less of a push towards Haredism. For instance, in communities where there is only one school, the school cannot serve as a barrier. Similarly, if young people can meet on their own, rather than through shadchanim, there will be less of a pressure towards Haredism.)
I hope that you find these analyses interesting. I would have liked to take more time to think about these issues, but I understand the time constraints that apply to blogs. I apologize if my analyses are somewhat half-baked, but that is the best I can do given the time constraints. However, I do want to specifically address the issue you raised regarding the great books and classical culture. I assume that you would consider me well read. However, I do not see any future for that as an ideal. The reason is not multiculturalism, but simply that the world has moved from the view of education as bildung to an instrumental view of education. In the 1970s, YU didn't offer an accounting major because that is not in accordance with its mission of providing a liberal education. It all seems quaint now. Students want a financial reward from their education. Modern Orthodoxy would be better advised to compete by providing a better torah education while allowing people to make a living than by professing an ideal of torah and madda (with madda being some type of bildung). (I have some more ideas regarding YU and Touro college, but I cannot put them in sufficiently coherent form in the short time I have now.)

...


My response: Let us be clear, Garnel Ironheart does not believe in brainwashing people. He does follow the fairly common belief that people turn to terrorism because they are brainwashed. He would probably benefit from reading Eli Berman.


I see this change in how one views education, from bildung to being instrumental for making money, as coming from modern liberalism. I agree with Allan Bloom, in his Closing of the American Mind, that once the modern academic world stopped defending the notion of eternal universal truths then the humanities lost all claim to having any value. So now why should students bother to study Plato? Instead, they should go off to Sy Syms business school and try to make as much money as they can. One of the advantages the Haredim have (and this goes for all religious fundamentalists and explains why, contrary to the liberal narrative, they have been gaining in strength) is that they can still make claims about universal truths with a straight face. If you are interested in universal truths you are not going to go to liberal post-modernism and multiculturalism. (Maybe I am an intellectual optimist, but I like to believe that people care about their lives having meaning that they would be willing to accept the fact that death would be the end as long as they could believe that what they did accomplish in this life was actually meaningful in some ultimate sense.) I am probably old-fashioned and too much of an ideological purist, but I believe that Yeshiva University should never have started offering accounting degrees. In fact, I would want them to abolish the entire business school. An education means a method of thinking, not just a utilitarian skill. As such, real education means the humanities or a math or science. Accounting and physical therapy degrees are a contradiction in terms and are no more an education than a degree in managing garbage. If Yeshiva University and Modern Orthodoxy wish to continue to be relevant they need to take up the banner of the humanities and of universal truths. Secular liberalism cannot maintain a faith in universal truths so it has lost the ability to defend the humanities. What is needed are people whose religious faith gives them a belief in universal truths and who value the humanities as helping us understand these universal truths. Such people could defeat the relativism of the left while defending liberalism (the classical kind) from the fundamentalism of the right.

Their OTDs Were Better Than Our OTDs: Rabbi Dovid Schwartz Responds

Rabbi Dovid Schwartz offers a response to Michael Makovi:


As I indicated, what most troubled me about your letter was that while it was quick to defend the secular Zionists and such (which is remarkable - I do sincerely thank you), nevertheless, it was quick to condemn the contemporary OTDs and such.



I beg your pardon.  I did not "condemn" anyone.  But as politically incorrect as this may be neither do I shy away from being judgmental.  The Torah enjoins us to judge favorably, not to suspend judgment entirely.  What I wrote, and what I believe, is that not only was the religiosity of the observant Jews of the interbellum period superior to the religiosity of contemporary Jews but that the IRRELIGIOSITY of the NON-observant Jews of the interbellum period was "superior" to the irreligiosity of their contemporary counterparts.  On a absolute dispassionate, non-empathic level any Jew with Torah -fidelity ought to "condemn" Torah infidels as we presume that a just and compassionate G-d does not visit insurmountable nisyonos on anyone.  A tough test is a compliment from G-d.  But I am neither dispassionate, without empathy nor "holier-than-thou".  I stand in awe of the BTs I work with and who have done a remarkably better job of the hand that HaShem dealt them than I have with done with the one that He dealt me. 



Nor do I presume that I would have stayed "on the derech" if confronted with the tests of interbellum irreligious (Please re-read the letter.  This is its denouement) or even with molestation or some of the severer tests that confronts contemporary OTDs.  I was merely voicing a Tom Brokaw-like opinion about what I consider to be the "Greatest [Jewish] Generation". In comparing, on a pan-societal level, yesteryears irreligious with today's OTDs I voted in favor of the former.  Does this equate to a "condemnation" of the latter?  Not IMO.  I'd ask you to be slower to judgment in your condemning me for imagined condemnations.



You admit the "broken school system", and you admit that the school systems are unable to impart true religiosity unless they include 8+ years of kollel. Shouldn't this set off alarms in your head? Perhaps the OTDs are responding to these failures of the school system?



No doubt many are. Others are responding to lousy parenting, sibling rivalries or a myriad of other "failures". Those alarms were set off in my head long ago or I could never have written what I wrote... least of all to the editor if the Yated. I am all for Yeshiva and Bais Yaakov school reform but people of good conscience can agree to disagree on what reforms are needed and how best to implement them.  I am not for throwing out the baby with the bathwater and a total revamping of the system from the ground up.  For our time and place there is much that IS good and holy in the current educational system.



Again, on a case by case personal level I was not blaming any particular OTD for their jettisoning of Torah-study and observance.  Nor am I ready to make any case by case condemnations of particular schools, teachers and/or parents. A myriad of factors result in pushing youngsters OTD some from the realm of yedeeyah and others from the realm of bekheera.  That said,  on a generational,  pan-societal level I opine that the (failed) tests that conspired to push the 1920-30s Bundist OTD were more daunting than those that pushed and continue to push the 1990s- 2010 Yeshiva or Bais Yaakov dropout OTD.  Especially in instances when abuse and molestation are absent. I am neither statistician nor (professional) sociologist.  And while it may be true that 75% or more of abused/ molested students go OTD I'm not convinced that 75% of those OTD did so because they were abused and/or molested.  A system that demands too much of some, too little of others has too few extra-curriculars and invariably tries jamming square pegs into round holes is a helluva rough row to hoe.  But again IMO it hardly compares with dealing with grinding poverty, genocidal anti-Semitism, educational and professional state-sanctioned apartheid and discrimination and come-hither sweeping intellectual ferment movements and parties which were the testes of the interbellum OTDs.



I know more about the Modern Orthodox community than the Haredi one, so it is difficult for me to speak of the Haredi one except as an outsider looking in, but what I see, from where I stand, is that the Haredi community forces an outdated and obsolete worldview on its students.


Talk about sweeping self-congratulatory condemnations!  For now I have lost my ta'am in further responses.  As a product of that community and its School Systems I fear that anything else that I write will be greeted with the dismissive contempt reserved for those who are out-of-touch and mired in a medieval mentality.  Explain to me why further responses will NOT be utter exercises in futility?