Must History Destroy Tradition: Idel’s Response to Yerushalmi

The late Prof. Yosef Yerushalmi, in his classic book Zakhor, challenged the notion that history was something intrinsic to Judaism. He argued that, while history was important for the Bible, post-biblical Judaism consciously downplayed history to the extent that from Josephus, in the first century, up until the early modern period there is almost no Jewish historical writing. The sixteenth century saw a swath of Jewish histories in the wake of 1492, but it was post-emancipation Jewry that truly embraced historical study. Yerushalmi saw this as ironic since it was precisely such Jews who were in the process of assimilating. As such, Jewish history becomes the product not of Judaism, but of the abandonment of Judaism. I would add that at a basic level, history challenges traditional Judaism not just because it might contradiction traditional Jewish claims like the Exodus from Egypt, but because its methods are a direct rejection of traditional Jewish notions of remembrance.

I find Moshe Idel's response worth sharing:


I cannot dispute his [Yerushalmi's] own feeling that the career of a Jewish historian may represent an existential rupture, perhaps a tragic one, with traditional Judaism. … The stark opposition [though] between history and belief presupposes some form of religiosity that alone is conceived of as authentic and attributes to the corrosive acts of history an antireligious effect. By contrast, I would resort to a vision of a complex and multifaceted tradition in order to resolve what may be conceived of as a state of fall or of despair. (Idel, "Yosef H. Yerushalmi's Zakhor" JQR 97.4(2007) pg. 495)


On the reverse side, Orthodox Judaism, particularly Haredim, often create either or scenarios where one either accepts their understanding of Jewish tradition as THE Judaism or one is outside of the Jewish tradition. So I put the challenge to my readers of all faiths, how does the study of history, particularly the embracing of the historical method play itself out in your religious beliefs? If we were to bring in historians to construct a religion according to their tastes and sensibilities what sort of distinctive features might figure prominently?

Adam’s Rib and Anarchy: A Response to David Friedman

Previously I wrote about Milton Friedman of blessed memory and his documentaries "Free to Choose," done during the 1980s. John Stossel recently devoted an episode of his talk show to pay homage to "Free to Choose."






Milton Friedman's son, David Friedman, is also a libertarian economist. In The Machinery of Freedom: A Guide to Radical Capitalism (follow the link to read the book for free), though, he takes his libertarian logic to its anarchist extreme. After spending the first half of the book suggesting ways to sell off excess parts of government such as schools and roads (policies that I heartily support), Friedman turns to government itself and to how we might function without it. Friedman offers the following scenario:


Suppose, then, that at some future time there are no government police, but instead private protection agencies. These agencies sell the service of protecting their clients against crime. Perhaps they also guarantee performance by insuring their clients against losses resulting from criminal acts.


How might such protection agencies protect? That would be an economic decision, depending on the costs and effectiveness of different alternatives. On the one extreme, they might limit themselves to passive defenses, installing elaborate locks and alarms. Or they might take no preventive action at all, but make great efforts to hunt down criminals guilty of crimes against their clients. They might maintain foot patrols or squad cars, like our present government police, or they might rely on electronic substitutes. In any case, they would be selling a service to their customers and would have a strong incentive to provide as high a quality of service as possible, at the lowest possible cost. It is reasonable to suppose that the quality of service would be higher and the cost lower than with the present governmental protective system.


Friedman's system goes all the way up to having private court systems. When members of different systems come into conflict the protection agencies step in as arbitrators. In essence, instead of one giant nation-State, we would have numerous private States with no relation to boundaries, but simply personal choice. The advantage of this is that people would be free to choose their protection agencies and even to switch agencies as it suits their interests.


I admit that there is a certain elegance to David Friedman's suggestion and if I were to try putting together an anarchist system it would look something like Friedman's. What I particularly admire about Friedman is that he comes to his anarchism honestly, from a libertarian desire to avoid coercion, as opposed to most anarchists who come to their beliefs from a socialism based desire to use coercion to overthrow capitalism. The problem, as I see it, with Friedman's anarcho-capitalism is that it does not take into account the question of authority; mainly that States, in order for their authority to be meaningful, need their citizens to accept them as having a meta-legitimacy regardless of what they think of specific decisions. The State cannot simply be something that you accept or reject based on how you feel about it at the moment.


Take for example a woman whose husband cheats on her. To play out this alternative Adam's Rib scenario, our woman approaches the political establishment, headed by Spencer Tracy, to demand justice. Spencer Tracy, operating within the parameters of modern legal theory, suggests that this woman should be able to get a divorce on favorable terms and might be able to sue for emotional harm. Now if we are operating by standard government, the story ends here. Regardless of whether this woman believes that her honor has been violated and that it can only be redeemed if her husband and his mistress are given a more frontier form of justice, such as a bullet in the arm, she is held back by her "social contract" with the government. As long as the government protects her life, liberty, and property, she is required to obey the law even when the results are not to her liking. Enter Friedman's anarcho-capitalism and all of a sudden we have an alternative to this woman going into therapy to get over her wounded sense of honor. She can break off services with Spencer Tracy's conventional modern justice protection agency and take up Katherine Hepburn's alternative protection agency, which offers its clients the option of choosing from its select line of vendetta specialists (otherwise known as hit-men) to bring them a more "personal" justice. Perhaps our woman can take a leaf from Shylock and prepare her scales to receive her pound of flesh and start sharpening her knife against her shoe. It is useless here to tell the woman that such actions are wrong because she believes that, in this case, she is in the right, and now she has a justice system to give her what is "rightfully" hers.


Libertarianism relies on the fact that people are usually rational in their economic activities and can shrug off the exceptions. These principles break down when it comes to tort law because it means handing decision making over to people who, in their current state, are, by definition, incapable of making rational decisions. Think of divorce cases with both parties engage in a mutually destructive conflict, consumed by a hatred for the other and egged on by their lawyers. Besides for being personal, divorce cases suffer from the fact that they lack clear expectations and rules of conduct. Allow someone to stew in their anger and they are likely to believe that they deserve nothing less than a pound of flesh and if their current venue does not give it to them, they will find one that will. Friedman's anarcho-capitalism would mean divorce style cases across the board with guns to boot.


I would also add a libertarian objection to Friedman's system. Libertarianism relies on a distinction between direct physical harm, which is the proper object of government intervention, and non-physical harm, which the government has no place in and which must be left to the individual to pursue privately through the social realm. (For example, our woman might not be able to use the government to punish her cheating husband, but she can still have him publically humiliated by being thrown out of his church or synagogue.) Once we turn to anarcho-capitalism, there is no longer any distinction between the political and social; everything becomes social. As such the protection system, coming to replace the government, will no longer be bound by physical harm. People can pursue "justice" for the non-physical harm done to them and keep looking for a protection agency that gives it to them until they find one.


If I were to hone in on the difference between David Friedman and I it is that Friedman approaches the issue squarely from an economics perspective. He assumes rational behavior on the part of his participants as they pursue their monetary self-interest. I come to the issue from political theory and therefore ask how it is that governments can carry innate authority. This is something outside of economics and outside of pure reason as the nature of the game is for everyone to buy into an illusion. This is strange because Friedman does not strike me as a narrow-minded economist. For one thing, in addition to his father and Friedrich Hayek, he also dedicates his book to Robert A. Heinlein. Friedman has a strong interest in science-fiction and fantasy and has even written some; my challenge to him is why has he not allowed these things to come over into his political writing to transcend the mere economist in him?

Asperger Hiring

The Columbus Dispatch has an article today Asperger syndrome in the work place, "Young Adults with Asperger's Syndrome Struggle to Find Jobs." The article features my friend Dr. Tom Fish of Aspirations.

This discussion of adults on the spectrum needing jobs serves as a good illustration of the weakness of the child based cure model used by groups like Autism Speaks. Being able to diagnose autism at an early age and even being able to "cure" it does nothing for adults. All the autistic children out there are going to become autistic adults so what are we doing to help them?

The first step in solving this problem is to get out of the medical model of disability and move to a social model where people on the spectrum are viewed not as people who are disabled, but as members of a minority group. Businesses exist to make money; they are not going to hire charity cases. They can, though, be convinced to follow their own interests and hire and even go out of their way to make room for people who are unconventional and have unconventional skills.

Friedrich A. Hayek on the Fundamental Weaknesses of Conservatism

I was just reading Friedrich A. Hayek's essay "Why I am not a Conservative." It is an exemplary statement of the travails of someone who, having rejected modern liberalism, finds he is unable to stand with conservatives. There are a number of passages I thought worth sharing with readers. As Hayek sees it, the fundamental weakness of conservatism is that it is an intellectual non-option.

[Conservatism] by its very nature … cannot offer an alternative to the direction in which we are moving. It may succeed by its resistance to current tendencies in slowing down undesirable developments, but, since it does not indicate another direction, it cannot prevent their continuance. It has, for this reason, invariably been the fate of conservatism to be dragged along a path not of its own choosing. The tug of war between conservatives and progressives can only affect the speed, not the direction, of contemporary developments. (The Constitution of Liberty pg. 398.)

The ideological bankruptcy of conservatism plays itself it in how it confronts new ideas.

Conservatives feel instinctively that it is new ideas more than anything else that cause change. But, from its point of view rightly, conservatism fears new ideas because it has no distinctive principles of its own to oppose to them; and, by its distrust of theory and its lack of imagination concerning anything except that which experience has already proved, it deprives itself of the weapons needed in the struggle of ideas. Unlike liberalism with its fundamental belief in the long-range power of ideas, conservatism is bound by the stock of ideas inherited at a given time. And since it does not really believe in the power of argument, its last resort is generally a claim to superior wisdom, based on some self-arrogated superior quality. (Pg. 404.)

Hayek specifically castigated conservatives for their lack of imagination concerning evolution:

I can have little patience with those who oppose, for instance, the theory of evolution or what are called "mechanistic" explanations of the phenomena of life simply because of certain moral consequences which at first seem to follow from these theories, and still less with those who regard it as irreverent or impious to ask certain questions at all. By refusing to face the facts, the conservative only weakens his own position. Frequently the conclusions which rationalist presumption draws from new scientific insights do not at all follow from them. But only by actively taking part in the elaboration of the consequences of new discoveries do we learn whether or not they fit into our world picture and, if so, how. (pg. 404-05.)

I find Hayek's call to take part in the intellectual discussion of the day particularly noteworthy. If you are not an active part of the discussion, offering serious alternatives, then you have no grounds to offer a word of criticism even to begin with.

An Anthropologist Does ArtScroll: A Review of Orthodox by Design

I was really looking forward to reading Jeremy Stolow's Orthodox by Design: Judaism, Print Politics, and the ArtScroll Revolution, about the Haredi ArtScroll publishing company and its influence on Judaism today. Unfortunately, the book is hamstrung, by a dreary anthropological style of writing, a failure to fully engage the material and needless padding in the attempt to create a short book out of what should have been a long article.

Stolow's argument is one that should be familiar to readers of this blog; Haredim, like any self-proclaimed conservative group bent on defending tradition, are trapped by the fact that their very attempt to defend tradition constitutes a change in of itself. ArtScroll is a textbook example of this. Its stated goals are twofold; first to present an "authentic" (i.e. Haredi) version of Judaism and, second, to make this Judaism accessible beyond the narrow enclaves of Haredi yeshiva schools. What the editors of Artscroll, Rabbis Nosson Scherman and Meir Zlotowitz, are not willing to face up to is the fact that such goals are mutually contradictory; the very act of attempting to make Judaism accessible to those raised in a Western culture fundamentally changes it. Also of interest was Stolow's proposed attempt to look at ArtScroll as a mode of transporting authority from the Haredi leadership to people with only a tenuous connection to that world. (I have written about networks of authority mainly within the context of Sabbatianism.)

The fact that ArtScroll represents something different was something understood, I think, intuitively by all of us growing up in the yeshiva system. "Rabbi ArtScroll" constituted its own form of Judaism with only a formal connection to the Judaism we were studying. Looking at the issue from the perspective of John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge's God is Back, the existence of this ArtScroll Judaism is simply the arrival of the American model of religion to Haredi Judaism. ArtScroll offers a surface traditionalism, supporting traditional doctrines and rejecting academic criticism, while at the same time supporting the latest in comfort living and self-help. This goes a long way to explain the existence of Susie Fishbein's Kosher by Design series and Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski, about whom Stolow devotes full chapters.

Unfortunately, this is not a line of inquiry that Stolow bothers to follow. Instead, the author allows himself to get caught up in writing a work of anthropology, trying to apply Clifford Geertz's notions of "scripturalism" to Haredi Judaism and ArtScroll, "treating 'the written word' as a strategically decisive source of knowledge and source of religious authority." (Kindle 731) This issue has already been the subject of Dr. Haym Soloveitchik's stunning essay "Rupture and Reconstruction: The Transformation of Contemporary Orthodoxy." We would have been in Stolow's debt if he would have added depth to Dr. Soloveitchik's narrative. Instead, Stolow seeks to take this issue of "scripturalism" and apply it to the physical process of bookmaking and distribution, leading to the dullest parts of the book.

Part of Stolow's problem is that he is not a historian. He lacks the ability to analyze texts and formulate a narrative from that analysis. He could have written a history of ArtScroll, showing how the story of ArtScroll fits into the larger narrative of the rise of Haredi Orthodoxy in the latter part of the twentieth century. This would have required an in-depth knowledge of American Jewish history and the ability to confront texts. For example, one could talk about the reinterpretive process undergone by Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzatto, with his underlying asceticism, at the hands of Rabbi Twerski in order to fashion a Path of the Just comprehendible to a modern audience. This would require that one confront both Luzzatto's the Path of the Just and Rabbi Twerski as serious intellectual positions.

Stolow's approach seems designed to avoid engaging actual texts; this goes for traditional Jewish texts in Hebrew and Aramaic as well as the popular English texts of ArtScroll, supposedly his field of study. Instead, Stolow comes to the field as an anthropologist; he talks to people, from the editors of ArtScroll down to lay users, looks at books as physical objects, outside of their actual content, and attempts to fit his observations within the general context of some theory, without a narrative or a serious intellectual engagement with the object of his inquiry. This serves to create a study with surface intellectual sophistication but which actively avoids any such thing in practice. Instead of writing a book that was readable and advanced the discussion of modern Jewish, Stolow does neither.

The Military Mission of the Ottoman Empire

I previously discussed the difference between the military and missionary models of conversion as they relate to the Islamic and Christian traditions. The military model sees the conversion of the targeted population as a logical consequence of political rule, while the missionary model eschews politics, even to the point of accepting martyrdom, in the hope of converting the dominant society through argument and claims of miracles. I would like to point readers to an example of the military model as practiced under the Ottoman Empire in the seventeenth century.

Marc David Baer, in Honored by the Glory of Islam: Conversion and Conquest in Ottoman Europe, analyzes Ottoman conversionary tactics during the reign of Mehmed IV (1648-87). Mehmed IV is best known to Jewish history for being sultan during the outbreak of Sabbatai Sevi's messianic movement in 1665-66, to European history for presiding over the failed attempt to capture Vienna in 1683 and to Turkish history for being a pleasure seeking hunting enthusiast who allowed his empire to decline around him. Baer puts all three of these things together to knit an apology for Mehmed IV. Baer sees Mehmed IV's policies as being part of a consistent and remarkably successful plan of converting Christians, Jews and wayward Muslims. In this Mehmed IV was largely influenced by the conservative Kadizadeli movement, particularly the preacher Vani Mehmed Efendi. Instead of killing Sabbatai, the Ottomans hoped to use Sabbatai as a conversionary tool. Baer conclusively demonstrates how Sabbatai's conversion fit into a common pattern of ritualized conversions where Jews, Christians and heterodox Muslims would come before the court of the sultan to receive instruction in the faith, be dressed in new garments, and to be rewarded with a purse full of coins and a symbolic position at court. The failed siege of Vienna and the setbacks suffered at the end of Mehmed IV's reign, leading to his overthrow, should not detract from several decades of Ottoman military expansion, enlarging the sphere of Islamic power. This involved not just conquering territory, but the "Islamification" of the physical space under their control. This was also accomplished, in cases like the major fire in Istanbul, by not allowing Jews and Christians to rebuild and expelling them from specific neighborhoods thus turning former Jewish and Christian neighborhoods to Islamic spaces. Even Mehmed IV's love of hunting is seen as a means of projecting an image of the conquering Muslim warrior. Hunting served as a form of mock warfare where the sultan could demonstrate his personal bravery and command over other men. Furthermore the hunt served to allow Mehmed IV to travel around the empire and bring him in contact with his non-Muslim subjects and bring them to the faith.

What interests me about the conversion tactics described by Baer are that, while they bear a surface resemblance to the missionary model, they are still rooted primarily within the political and as such remains part of the military model. In our Ottoman scenario people might come to Islam out of their own free will. Even the accounts of Sabbatai's conversion, the major example in Baer's discussion of a forced conversion, carry the sense more of a gentlemen's agreement than brute force. The gist seems to be: "you Sabbatai are guilty of treason and should be put to death, but the sultan has nothing personal against you and is willing to call the whole thing off. He would just like you to do him a small favor, convert to Islam." Despite the absence of formal violence, though, the primary vehicle of conversion (for Sabbatai or anyone else) was the State and the realization that one could most effectively deal with this State by simply converting.

Such conversions lack drama and it was probably the point for it not to be dramatic. Jews and Christians are people of the book; they just need to accept the true conclusion of their faith and accept Islam, which should not be a big deal for them or require any sort of "rebirth." As such there is no need to use physical coercion. There is also no need for a sophisticated attempt to understand Judaism and Christianity and argue with their adherents on their own ground. There is something positive about this, in that Jews and Christians are not demonized; there is no need for them to be shown the "error" of their ways because they already know the truth and should be expected to readily convert. On the flip side, such a view does not take the opposition seriously even to the extent of acknowledging that the other side has opinions to be refuted. Christianity at least took Judaism seriously enough to polemicize against it. One is hard pressed to find an Islamic tradition of even achieving that baseline of respect.

Of Matisse, Skirt Lengths and Teaching Skills

In a recent essay in the Orthodox Journal Conversations, Esther Lapian attacks the Modern Orthodox Memlakhti-dati school system in Israel for caving in to Haredi standards in terms of girls' education. She tells the story of her daughter choosing the artist Henri Matisse as the topic for her school project and getting a poor grade on it despite the hard work she put in. What is interesting is the response Mrs. Lapian got from the teacher when asked for an explanation:


"Well," she said hesitating, "it was a bit skimpy." "Skimpy?!" I cried in disbelief. "She's in fifth grade. She could have chosen 'Water' or 'Color' or 'Why Is the Sky Blue?' Instead she picked a difficult topic and handed in work she did herself. What do you mean by skimpy? "Well," she said quietly, "the truth is … I have never heard of Matisse." ("When Worlds Collide: Why Observant Student Teachers Refuse to Teach in the Memlakhti-dati School System" Conversations Spring 2010 pg. 134)


Mrs. Lapian goes on to note that:

Part of the reason why the teacher in the Matisse story continues to teach in our schools is because she looks the part. She and hundreds like her are teaching in our schools, despite the fact that they may be inferior teachers, because her elbows are covered, her skirts are long, and in the case of married women, her head is covered.

Over the past 10 to 15 years, the dati-leumi establishment has become obsessed with the dress code of women. Prominent rabbis write outrageous articles measuring centimeters on the neck and on the arms. While the suitability of male teachers is measured in how much they know and the quality of their prayer, in the case of women, the skill of pious dressing can override the skills of good teaching. (pg. 138-39)


I would see this issue as a variant of the dress code challenge I raised previously. Every time one chooses to make an issue out of something, by implication one is also saying that other things are not important. Think of it as a point system in which you have a limited number of points to invest. Thus every point you invest in women's dress is a point you are not investing in women's learning or in male civility. To invest in something of minor importance is not just wasting a point it is the support of the negation of a virtue that has value. In our case of women's dress, one cannot play innocent in the statement being made. When you state that women have to be dressed a certain way you are also saying that women do not have to be well educated and that men do not have to respect them. The fact that you do not come out and explicitly say this is irrelevant; it only means that you also support mendacity as well.

It is very easy to say, as politicians regularly do, that you support certain values, whether they are long skirts, children, motherhood, or apple pie. Because such support is so cheap, it is also irrelevant and meaningless. Values only mean something if you are willing to pay a price for them, particularly when that price is that of another value. In the real world, values are going to clash with each other. They gain their meaning precisely when put up against the other and sacrificed for something higher. Do not tell me what values you support; tell me what price you will pay for them.


(For a different reaction to this article see QED.)

Happy Birthday to the American Messianic Dream

Solomon Schindler (1842-1915), a German Reform Rabbi who immigrated to the United States, ended his book on Messianism, Messianic Expectations and Modern Judaism, with the following declaration:

At the very moment when the old bellman's grandson shouted up the belfry, "Ring, ring, grandpa! Oh, ring for liberty!" and when the old state-house bell of Philadelphia spread with its metal tongue the news that the United States had declared their independence, the Messianic idea heaved its last sigh. At that auspicious moment its soul passed away, and what was left of it was a lifeless corpse, which has for some time lain in state, but which is buried for good.

Schindler would, at the end of his life, such views as he turned toward a more traditional brand of Judaism.

Much of my work with messianism can be seen as my attempt to come to terms, not only with the fact that such a view of modernity is flat out incorrect, but also why. This is the same American society that produced Levi Parsons and Pliny Fisk, a pair of Christian missionaries who traveled to Palestine, not only in hopes of converting the Jew, but of restoring him to his homeland in Palestine. A task which Parsons and Fisk believed was necessary for bringing about the Second Coming. Parsons and Fisk were pioneering figures in an Anglo-American Christian Zionism that continues to this day. Surely American messianism should take its place at the heart of the American narrative as part of what moves this country.

In looking out onto the world of the twenty-first century, one of the questions that has to top our minds is why has messianism, in all of its various forms, not died out. A good place to begin is precisely that Liberty Bell and the signing of the Declaration of Independence. The United States does not just represent the secularization of society or even the continuation of messianism by secular means, like Marxism; the United States represents a blending and reconciliation of religion and secularism and a means of bringing religious messianism into the realm of secular politics.

My God is Back Review Over at Book of Doctrines and Opinions

I did a guest post for Dr. Alan Brill over on his blog; it is a review of the book God is Back by John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge. The book deals with the continued role of religion in modern day politics. The first part, a general review of the book, is already up. There is also going to be a more specific discussion of the book's relevance for Modern Orthodox Judaism. So check it out.

The Tradition Based Conservatism of a Liberal

One of the foundational premises of my worldview is a certain Burkean conservatism. By this I mean a belief in the value of tradition as playing a necessary role in the maintenance of society. While the liberal looks around at society and sees all that is wrong and might be improved, safe in his faith in the natural goodness of human beings, the conservative wonders why we are all not being murdered in our beds as society collapses into Hobbesian warfare. The chief reason for this, our conservative soon concludes, is that people have this inclination to do and accept things simply because it has been done that way for a long time, tradition. If one digs a little deeper one comes to understand that tradition is an implicit pact we make with each other to submit ourselves to an outside authority. This can be illustrated by the trap Strepsiades falls into in Aristophanes' The Clouds. He cannot deny the validity of tradition that he is obligated to pay back his creditors without undermining the tradition that his son has to respect and obey him.

This support of tradition goes against and ultimately delegitimizes all revolutionary systems, anything that attempts to cut itself off from the past and start anew. All attempts to simply overturn the established government or society, no matter how flawed the old system, are doomed to descend into violence and tyranny. Edmund Burke understood this early on about the French Revolution even before it descended into the Reign of Terror. In modern times, in an even more blood-soaked manner, this pattern has been repeated in Russia, China, and Cambodia. The "revolutions" that worked were precisely those revolutions, like the American Revolution and the English Glorious Revolution, which actively confirmed existing established authorities and thus were not really revolutions at all. With revolution not being an option, the Burkean conservative seeks to work within the system, reforming it, but in ways that not only do not undermine the system but actively confirm its validity.

Burkean conservatism is easily misunderstood because it is often confused with another tradition based ideology that also calls itself "conservative," one that sees the maintenance of tradition and opposition to change as values in of themselves and even as the ultimate value. The most common forms of this mindset are fundamentalist religions. The weakness of this narrow conservatism, and ultimately why it is not conservative at all, is that very act of recognizing something as a tradition in need of defense against the assault of modernity and liberalism is in of itself a radical mental paradigm shift that changes the system. Thus a true conservatism can only exist in a mind that is not conscious of it and in a society with no liberals to challenge it. Living in a world where such conditions do not exist we are left with degrees of conservatism.

It is here that any conservative most face a paradoxical dilemma of having to pick their change; do you accept the obvious change offered by the liberal or do you accept the more subtle changes implied by actively opposing the liberal. Take the example of women's dress, which I have previously discussed; As an Orthodox Jew, desiring to maintain traditional Jewish law and practice in the face of modernity, what am I more concerned about, women wearing clothing that does not conform to traditional Jewish practice or the existence of goon squads enforcing such standards? Am I even comfortable with the publishing of specific guidelines as to how women should dress? What high spiritual values am I upholding as I put a tape measure to women's skirts to make sure they go x amount of inches below the knee? Whatever one believes about how women should dress, noticing that common standards of dress today do not conform with what one might read in Jewish legal codices and deciding that the letter of Jewish law must be maintained at all costs, without seriously considering the potential unintended consequences, or worse to even embrace them, is not just short-sighted, it is not even conservative. Being a conservative under such circumstances means picking your poison in regards to change and having a mature appreciation of your tradition to know what parts to defend.

An honest tradition supporting conservatism contains in itself the seeds of its own form of liberalism. It is plausible to argue that in defense of traditional Jewish values such as rabbinic authority and not having men obsessing about women one should categorically invalidate all laws pertaining to modest dress. We should declare that we no longer hold of such things and even that one is now not allowed to dress in a traditional manner (much the same way as the Lutheran Church now rejects all statements of Luther against Jews and does not allow anti-Semitism) in order to completely undermine and rip out the hearts of those who would threaten the very essence of Judaism by instituting rule by goon squad and replacing modesty with skirt lengths.

I would not go this far. In a Judaism run by me, laws concerning modest dress for men and women would remain on the books, but without any active community enforcement. In its place would be a strong push for modesty, that one should not draw attention to oneself as a physical body at the expense of the spirit and the mind, on the part of both men and women. If religious Jews, already keeping the basic essentials of Jewish practice, were to come to me and ask how to put these ideals of modesty into practice then we could bring out the sources and discuss the possibility of holding oneself to a stricter standard of dress than the society at large.

To bring this back to Burkean conservatism, I put a high value on tradition not because I see tradition as having a value in of itself or because I believe that it is somehow possible to just have tradition without changing anything, but because I see tradition as the foundation upon which one can build a stable society, the sort of society in which can afford to tolerate diversity and in which one can experiment with different possibilities even to the extent of making changes. In the long run, no tradition can go on forever without change; the choices are either moderate change, which serves to support the essentials or the downfall of the entire system. In the end, being a Burkean conservative not only allows me to be a liberal, it makes it a necessity.

My Feminist Response to the Haredi Marriage Crisis

With all of my opposition to modern feminism, it is easy to lose track of the fact that I am a feminist if of a nineteenth-century John Stuart Mill School. I believe that human beings can better themselves through reason, as they pursue their own good in their own way. It helps if they are left to themselves and are not shackled by tyrannical governments and societies. Since women make up a little more than fifty percent of the human race, this applies to women as well. Women need to be brought in as equal partners in society and government and this can most effectively be done through education and suffrage. I do not recognize the concept of "women's rights," only human rights. Also, since I deal with rights solely within the context of protection from direct physical harm, I have no interest in waging war against "patriarchy" or deconstructing "male" modes of thinking. Feminists would be correct in criticizing me for employing a distinctively Enlightenment/male discourse and attempting to shove women into it, thus making it impossible for women to ever truly be "equal" in its most extreme sense. I do not care; what I offer is a logically consistent system and if women do not wish to take it they are free to try their luck with traditional patriarchy.

My nineteenth-century feminism was awakened by a recent article I saw on the Haredi website Cross Currents, "Avoiding Corruption in Shidduchim," by Rabbi Jonathan Rosenblum, which attacked the current manifestation of marriage dowries within the Haredi world. Rabbi Rosenblum argues that the practice of insisting that the prospective in-laws of Haredi men be expected to support their future sons-law while they sit and study in order to gain their daughters a respectable match creates its own back-door materialism, as marrying the girl from the wealthiest possible family becomes a status symbol. I thought it was a very good article. That being said, I was struck by the fact that the article and subsequent comments all focused on the boys vs. in-laws dynamics. Lost in the shuffle was the fact that there are young women involved here, being asked to make life-altering decisions in support of a system that relegates them to if not second class status then at least to secondary roles. So I put up the following comment:

Something should be said here about the situation of women. I think that it is interesting that women remain passive figures even at your hands, Rabbi Rosenblum. I was just talking to a married a Haredi woman about her decision to become a speech therapist and asked her what her goals were in growing up. She responded that her goal in life was "to be a Mommy." A very wonderful girl, but there are lots of people who want to be mommies and many who might even make good mommies. Why should any bochur [young man] take someone simply because they will make a good mommy, unless this woman can support him by becoming a speech therapist or has a father who can support him? Change has to start with women valuing themselves as individuals, beings with unique talents who cannot simply be replaced like a spare part.

You can say that I was channeling Mary Wollstonecraft in seeing women's equality as starting with women taking control over their lives. To be fair, there is even here a bit of the modern feminist in that I am asking a modern question; what does it mean when one party is the activist initiator and the other remains passive to be acted upon? One can also pick up from my comment that, however I may like individual Haredi women as people, I have little respect for them as beings capable and deserving of the sort respect and equal treatment that the Haredi world is not giving them.

Cross Currents took down my comment. I guess suggesting that women need to come forth as individuals in control of their own lives is too radical for some people. I can get used to the idea. Mothers lock up your daughters for I am coming with my radical feminist doctrines. I offer them the chance to be people and even to be respected for it.

Can Pacifists Be Citizens? A Jewish Solution

As previously noted, I view government as a devil's bargain. I accept the existence of an institution with the power to engage in violence and whose main purpose is violence. This applies to fighting wars and even the punishing of criminals. Government authority means nothing if, at the end of the day, they are unable to physically harm those who defy them. The main reason why I endorse government violence is that I see it as the alternative to private vendettas. I am not about to accept a world in which "every man does what is right in his own eyes." I can fathom turning the other cheek precisely because there is a police officer out there who can strike the person for me. Thus my purpose is not to engage in violence, but to do whatever I can to limit it. Openly acknowledging the necessity of violence puts me in much the same situation as Machiavelli, begging to be misunderstood as endorsing tyranny. I would argue that, on the contrary, my willingness to acknowledge the Machiavellian reality of government allows me to be a true defender of liberty and limit government violence. I recognize what kind of deal I am making and have clear boundaries. This is different from the person who pretends to deal with government and not make compromises with liberty. Such a person has no protection when faced with the real moral dilemmas of a tyrannical government.

 It is the common practice in times of war to grant draft exemptions to pacifists and "consciousness objectors." I fail to see the reason for this and fully agree with Richard Dawkins on the absurdity of giving people special protection simply because of "religion." By agreeing to be a citizen you accept the legitimacy of the government to fight wars and agree to help it do so. Since pacifists cannot agree to this, they cannot be citizens in any meaningful way. This is not a violation of anyone's religious liberties. Religious liberty only exists when you pay the door fee of becoming part of the system by accepting its validity. If you cannot pay that price then you are not part of the conversation.

The citizenship question really goes far beyond military service. If pacifists were consistent in their beliefs they would become "conscientious objectors" from jury duty and voting. By serving on a jury the government is asking you to accept their legal authority to punish people even with physical force. The government is also asking you to honestly declare whether you think a person is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Maximum security prisons are directly connected to the threat of physical violence; prisoners who do not comply face being beaten and if they try to escape they may be killed. How can a pacifist ever convict someone of a violent crime? I would add that since we can assume that any violent criminal was brought in by police licensed to engage in physical violence, such violence was either used or implicitly threatened. Thus a pacifist would have to automatically throw out any case rather than be an active participant in this system of government violence. If you let a person go who you believe beyond a reasonable doubt is guilty because you object to prison conditions and police tactics you are not keeping your end of the bargain you struck with the government.

When you vote for your congressional representative, you are voting for someone licensed by the Constitution to vote to declare war. The President is the Constitutional Commander in Chief with the power to lead the United States military in battle. Participating in an election means declaring the moral validity of the Congress to declare war and the President to wage it as put down in the Constitution. Since the Constitution is a war validating document, no pacifist can ever accept the legitimacy of the Constitution without making a hypocrite of himself.


Rather than forcefully expelling or killing pacifists, I would suggest a solution from Jewish history. Up until the end of the eighteenth century, Jews even when tolerated and allowed to live in peace, were not accepted as citizens. In each city Jews lived under the authority of their own kehilla system, operating as its own semi-autonomous government. It was the kehilla that negotiated with the Christian authorities for Jews to be allowed to live in the city and practice their own religion. These negations usually involved monetary payment, call it taxes or bribery. "In the pre-modern world, there was no such thing as rights. There were privileges that you paid for." Jews were also subject to blasphemy laws which barred them from making statement offensive to Christianity. This was not due to "intolerance," simply a matter of Jews, by definition, not being able to accept the legitimacy of a Christian State, whose claim to authority rested on Christian theological claims.

Pacifists should be allowed to live in peace within this country; not because of any right to religious liberty (they lost that right the moment they rejected the government, which gives allows for religious liberty to exist), but because they are non-threatening producers, whose presence benefits society at large. Pacifists should not actually be citizens. They should not have the right to vote, they should not serve on juries but should pay an extra head tax to cover their lack of military service. They would also have no free speech protection and be barred from making any statements deemed "subversive." Since they are outside the political system they have no reason to involve themselves in it or even speak about it. Every American would have the right to put themselves down as a pacifist and pay the consequences. (Children of pacifists should have the option of going to court and rejecting the beliefs of their parents and immediately take the test and oath of citizenship without having to wait five years.) Those who do not and instead decide to enjoy the full benefits of citizenship, lose all claim to ever being "conscientious objectors."

Aspirations on the Autism Puzzle

Jerod Smalley of the Columbus NBC affiliate station interviewed some people from Aspirations, including my friends Melanie Yergeau, Patrick Meehan (who served with me on the Autism conference panel on Wednesday) and Justin Rooney, for his Autism Puzzle news segment.





I particularly recommend the discussion about humor at the end and Justin's comment about his admiration for Richard Pryor for using humor precisely in the face of all the bad in one's life. Humor plays a major role in my life as a defense mechanism. I find that I take life so seriously that if I did not laugh I would be crushed by it.


Rather than being incapable of humor, I suspect that Asperger people have a special relationship to humor in that they have a foundational narrative of humor built right into them. Take a rational person and force them to confront an absurd situation. He can continue to insist on reason, futilely beat his head into a wall and become the object of the joke or he can become the initiator of the joke as he uses his reason to face down absurdity, expose it and even to embrace it to some degree. This is one of the most basic comedic narratives, but it is also a summary of what life every day is with Asperger syndrome and the challenges that come with it.