Education as Sociability Versus Education as Regurgitating Information: An Asperger Dilemma

James Pate ran with my post on Asperger sociability, contrasting it with a valedictorian speech by Erica Goldson. Goldson expresses her own frustrations about being declared valedictorian by her school:

… in retrospect, I cannot say that I am any more intelligent than my peers. I can attest that I am only the best at doing what I am told and working the system. Yet, here I stand, and I am supposed to be proud that I have completed this period of indoctrination. I will leave in the fall to go on to the next phase expected of me, in order to receive a paper document that certifies that I am capable of work. But I contend that I am a human being, a thinker, an adventurer – not a worker. A worker is someone who is trapped within repetition – a slave of the system set up before him. But now, I have successfully shown that I was the best slave. I did what I was told to the extreme. While others sat in class and doodled to later become great artists, I sat in class to take notes and become a great test-taker. While others would come to class without their homework done because they were reading about an interest of theirs, I never missed an assignment. While others were creating music and writing lyrics, I decided to do extra credit, even though I never needed it. So, I wonder, why did I even want this position? Sure, I earned it, but what will come of it? When I leave educational institutionalism, will I be successful or forever lost? I have no clue about what I want to do with my life; I have no interests because I saw every subject of study as work, and I excelled at every subject just for the purpose of excelling, not learning. And quite frankly, now I'm scared.


Reflecting on this issue, James notes:


I like the idea of reading things outside of my school assignments, something that I didn't do too much until about three years ago. Yes, I think that I was right to go to school and learn stuff that didn't interest me. That's the case right now, for I need to know certain things that I consider boring in order to navigate my way through life effectively. But it's enjoyable to learn for the sake of learning.

At the same time, as a person with Asperger's (and there are people with Asperger's who may have different impressions on this), I enjoyed the structure of school. You study, learn facts, regurgitate them back to your teacher, and thereby succeed.


Like James, I have mixed feelings about education as a process of absorbing information and spitting it back out. Let me say right off that I do not endorse such a mode of education and, like most people, agree that, in of itself, such an education is pointless and only serves to teach children how to play the system and ultimately hate learning. That being said, my younger self did have a very high regard for this process and was quite good at it at least in so far as this information pertained to a field of interest, mainly history. My younger self saw knowledge as the ultimate good; the more information you had in your head the smarter you were and the closer you were to understanding reality. It was only when I got into college that I started to seriously think about the purpose of studying history and the underlying methods by which one does so. My view of knowledge shifted from knowledge as self-evident and objectively true facts to be passively received to methods of analysis to be used to make sense of subjective pieces of information, meaning nothing in of themselves. Today, the history courses I teach are less about historical facts than a method with which to analyze the period incidentally listed in the title of the course. (See The Challenge of Skeptical Relativism.)


Despite having moved away from my earlier attitude toward education I still have not completely rejected it. Even in retrospect, I do not see the time I spent memorizing historical facts as being wasted. On the contrary, I see it as a necessary stage in my intellectual development, without which I could not be the method thinker that I am today. It was in reading Daniel Willingham's Why Student's Don't Like School that the two sides of my thinking clicked together. Willingham offers a defense of rote learning, particularly in the early stages of education as a necessary foundation for any serious intellectual education. In any field, there are just certain things you are going to have to know cold before you move on and there is no way around simply having to grimace and swallow. A conversation about critically understanding the history of western civilization is going to mean nothing to people who lack a basic awareness of Caesar, Charlemagne, and Napoleon. (Unfortunately, this includes a fair number of college students who supposedly passed European history in high school.) So a process of memorizing and spitting back information does have its limited place. Think of it is capital to be earned and then spent in order to acquire a real education.

Does Support for Gay Rights Entail Discrimination against Aspergers?

Ultimately, I can accept the neurotypical status quo, despite its inconveniences, because even when it "discriminates" against me, in its "discrimination" there is a larger equality. Those in the majority are not truly discriminating against me as their actions are in keeping with universal law. In our society, each person is free to attempt to fashion society as they see fit. As such, I am equal in society, as an individual, to any neurotypical, with an equal vote; I am simply fated to lose this vote. That being said, nothing in this process necessitates an acknowledgment of the superiority of the neurotypical position. This is no different than in a political democracy where the passage of the liberal expansion of government in no way implies the superiority of liberal positions. (This is one of the advantages of democracy; one can "lose" while still maintaining one's legitimacy, thus eliminating the need to turn to violence.) Furthermore, as an Asperger, I am simply one of many outsiders to society with the exact same problem; as we live in a society not designed with us in mind we are all at the disadvantage of having to suffer daily reminders of that fact. Ironically enough, this is comforting because we are all equally disadvantaged. Of course, this position only works if all outside groups are truly equally disadvantaged. The moment one outsider group is protected and given, as a "civil right," the right not to feel like outsiders then this all collapses. Thus, any attempt to give one outsider group such "civil rights" is actually an act of discrimination against all other groups as it implies that one group is "more equal" than others in deserving such rights.

At its core, the gay rights movement is about defining civil rights not just as protection against direct physical harm, but also against indirect harm or anything that results in the placing of homosexuals as outsiders. For example to say that attempts to define marriage as something between a man and woman discriminates against homosexuals requires the assumption that civil rights do not just mean that homosexuals are to be protected against laws that say things like "only heterosexuals shall be allowed to marry," (see How to Practice Discrimination against Homosexuals) but also against anything that incidentally puts them at a disadvantage. It is plausible that one can support a traditional definition of marriage simply because, in one's own mind, one believes that marriages between men and women accomplish something specific of importance to society without ever intending alienate homosexuals. Heterosexual marriage long predates the rise of the gay rights movement just as neurotypical friendship long predates society's awareness of Asperger syndrome. This is in contrast to racial discrimination laws like separate water fountains which have only existed in the presence of a racial minority and with the explicit purpose of alienating such groups. It is irrelevant to the guy rights movement whether supporters of traditional marriage are consciously acting against homosexuals. The fact that such a definition of marriage de facto harms homosexuals automatically makes it discrimination.

When Judge Walker decided that Proposition 8 discriminated against homosexuals, but left intact public school report cards and even government employee evaluations offering tangible physical rewards to those who "work well with others" (others, in this case, meaning neurotypicals), he denied my humanity and the humanity of every Asperger person. Somehow my suffering due to being forced to socialize and being penalized for failing to do so is not important, but the suffering of homosexuals in a traditional marriage society is. (Note that I am not denying the reality of homosexual suffering nor am I trivializing it.) The fact that Judge Walker likely never considered the issue of Asperger syndrome is irrelevant since he himself does not deem this to be relevant when applied to homosexuals. There are real consequences to this; homosexuals now have the force of law behind them as they negotiate with the rest of society. How can I claim to be different but equal if the government does not officially endorse that equality, particularly when the government is willing to endorse the equality of homosexuals? Clearly, unlike homosexuals whose alternative lifestyle is equally valid, the Asperger information based lifestyle is really a mental illness of not being able to relate to other people. As such, Aspergers must submit to the care of neurotypicals who clearly know better than they do and help "educate" and "cure" them. Those Aspergers who are stubborn and refuse to be "educated" and "cured" must suffer societal censure to make them see the error of their ways.

I have nothing against the practical objectives of the gay rights movement just as long as I get my "rights" as well. You want government endorsed gay marriage? I wish we could get rid of the concept of government endorsed marriage to begin with. People on the spectrum are statistically less likely to ever marry; thus, government marriage serves to place an undue tax burden on us as well as a means of alienating us by implying that our non-married lives are of less value. Perhaps we could have a form of "Asperger" marriage to acknowledge our special relationship to our fields of study. This could take the form of special tax breaks to help me complete my doctorate, discounts on museums, Renaissance fairs, and Comic-Con. You want to stick Heather has Two Mommies in public schools? Fine, I just want the entire concept of friendship and any other social relationship as an innate good removed from the curriculum. This is to say nothing of every other group of social outsiders, who must be given their "rightful" recognition. Anything less is bigotry.

I charge Judge Walker, the gay rights movement as well as their allies with the theft of the human rights of Aspergers as well as every outsider group. More importantly, I charge them with hypocrisy.

Social Relationships and Anti-Asperger Bigotry

Growing up as an Asperger was not easy; long before the concept of Asperger syndrome crossed my path I knew that I was different and that I lived in a society clearly not designed with me in mind. The fact that I stood out made me a target for bullying. More frustrating was the official bias inherent in the educational system. Consider the report card question of whether a child "plays well with others." Inherent in this question is the assumption that relating to other people is of great value. Our entire educational structure is premised far more on "socializing" than on the dissemination of information. Not that there is anything wrong with being social, but this approach to education is rooted in a neurotypical bias. My grade school report cards never asked if I was reading on my own for pleasure, if I pursued research into topics of interest outside of formal school assignment, or how well I critically analyzed texts. So while my neurotypical classmates never were faced with an existential crisis or even the friendly well-meaning suggestion that they attempt to operate in a more information based mode, I was plagued by the fact that I did not relate to people in the same way that others did. Was there something wrong with me because I was more interested in memorizing historical facts than with "playing well with others?" Was not the point of school to cram as much information into one's head as possible?

One could go so far as to say that any discussion of friendship reveals a neurotypical bias. My life would have been a lot easier if, in kindergarten, we would have been read, in addition to the books about friends, books about children who are happy doing stuff on their own, living in their own heads, and occasionally coming together with other children to achieve mutually beneficial results in keeping with ethical universal law. Perhaps the teacher could be sensitive when talking about friendship and point out to the class that this was one of many equally valid lifestyle choices.

I recognize that such "civil rights reforms" are unlikely to happen. It is not practical for society to rethink such basic features as social interactions just for my sake. Neurotypicals are not out to discriminate against me. The fact that I am, in a very real sense, harmed by the fact that our society was not constructed with someone like me in mind is incidental; you could say that I am collateral damage. Even if society wished to grant me such "civil rights" they would be unable to do so as they would then be faced with having to do the same for every other outsider group. Perhaps the deaf community would like to eliminate the societal veneration of speech and music as they implicitly relegate deaf people to an inferior status? How about eliminating sports such as basketball and football so as not to imply any lack of ability on the part of those in wheelchairs?

I have made my peace with making concessions to the values of neurotypical society even if I struggle precisely where to draw lines. One could say that I am engaged in a dialectical discourse with social relationships. I do actively seek out other people and attempt to form relationships with them. I am even now pursuing a romantic relationship. Granted, I tend to put a distinctively Asperger spin on these things, focusing on talking to people as opposed to hanging out with someone simply for the sake of being with them, though I am learning, bit by bit, to appreciate even the later. The one thing that I insistent on is that there is no inherent moral advantage to social relationships; the fact that I pursue these things is simply a matter of my personal convenience. In practice, this means that no has the right to criticize me for failing to act in accordance with neurotypical social standards or even for consciously ignoring them; if there is nothing inherently valuable about neurotypical social behavior then it is my right to follow it, not follow it or adapt it to suit my own purposes as I see fit. To say that neurotypical social behavior is somehow "better" than Asperger behavior would, of course, be bigotry.

I struggle with what I would do if I ever had a child on the spectrum; to what extent would I push such a child to be social? I think it would depend a lot on the social climate. I hope that my children will enter a world that is more accepting of Asperger behavior than the world that I grew up in; in such a world there would be less need to adapt to neurotypical standards. I suspect I will end up going through the motions of telling my children to be more sociable in such a way that they will feel free to ignore me as it suits them.

St. Augustine Teaches Rabbi Aharon Feldman Authentic Jewish History

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


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


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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

Doing What is Right in One’s Own Eyes: Yigal Amir and Judge Walker

As I am sure most of you know by now, last week Judge Vaughn Walker overturned California's Proposition 8 ban on legalizing gay marriage. In terms of gay marriage itself, I have no objection. I am no more opposed to gay marriage than I am to changing the tax code or inheritance law; these are things that I have no personal stake in, do not really care about, and am perfectly willing to be convinced one way or another, particularly as part of a negotiated agreement to gain something that I actually do care about, say the destruction of the Food and Drug Administration and the Department of Education. If homosexuals are excited about a piece of paper from the government saying that they are married and gives them a tax break then I am hardly about to begrudge them it and wish them well.

Whatever my feelings about gay marriage, what I am truly concerned about is the larger picture of maintaining the covenant of law and order. A foundational principle of law is that we agree to submit ourselves to abstract universal laws even when and, in a sense, precisely when they cause harm in specific situations. You support law not because you believe that it will always offer beneficial or just results, it will most certainly not, but because you believe that whatever harm is caused by following the law pales in comparison to the overthrow of law. As such, one embraces the harm as simply the necessary price to be paid to live under Law.

Take the example of Yigal Amir. Contrary to what was generally reported about Amir, he was not some crazed fanatical settler, but a veteran paratrooper and law student, who decided that the Prime Minister of the State of Israel, Yitzchak Rabin, had engaged in an ill-considered course of foreign policy, the Oslo Accords, which had cost the lives of Israeli citizens. As such Amir deemed Rabin a rodef, someone who was endangering the lives of others, and shot him. Now it would be absurd to respond to Amir's claim by arguing that Rabin's policy did not endanger Israeli lives because he and millions of people on the right believe it and are unlikely to change their minds. As long as the debate is about Oslo, Amir wins because we would be conceding to his cardinal premise that if a politician pursues a line of policy that costs the lives of citizens and if killing that politician will save lives that politician can be killed. Our argument has to be in support of abstract Law. Rabin, as the lawful head of government, had the legal right to sign the Oslo Accords regardless of the negative consequences and every Israeli citizen, including Amir, is obligated to accept that fact. Either there is a lawful Israeli government with the power to sign peace accords and hand over territory that it is the sovereign power over or there is no Israeli government and every man has the right to do what is "right in his own eyes," including murdering any "prime ministers" as well as their neighbors.

What would Judge Walker say if tomorrow he is confronted by a sane rational philosophically inclined man with a gun who believes that Walker has done something so bad that he now deserves to die and even that there would be a utilitarian benefit to society to kill him? Obviously, it would be useless and counterproductive to debate our philosopher gunman about his fundamental premises. Clearly, he has thought these through and is not likely to be convinced, and furthermore to even allow such a debate is a victory for his side. What Judge Walker would need to do is appeal to the man's sense of Law. He could start by telling the man about Hobbesian warfare, (see Jack Bauer's Last Hobbesian Battle) show him clips of the massacres in Bosnia and Rwanda and explain that whatever good he believes he is doing by committing murder will be outweighed by having the entire country following the same logic and turning into Bosnia and Rwanda (see Slouching to Bosnia). Next Judge Walker could speak of John Locke and how citizens sign contracts to form governments and follow the law. Finally, Judge Walker could introduce his assailant to Immanuel Kant and suggest that he submit himself to Universal Law. Our formally state of nature gunman would see the light, the possibility of living in a world where people of different races, creeds, and political ideologies live together without murdering each other. Now a believer the man throws away his gun and allows Judge Walker to take him by the hand as they both fall to their knees in submission to Universal Law (essentially the same thing as God, but do not let the atheists know), followed by pledging allegiance to the flag of the manifestation of Universal Law in their geographic area, their sovereign State. Afterward, the cops could come to take the man away and put him in jail for several months for trespassing and threatening a judge, during which time the man could preach the gospel of Universal Law to his fellow prisoners.

Oh, wait a minute. Judge Walker does not believe in submitting himself to Universal Law. The people of California decided to define the theoretical concept of marriage as something between members of the theoretical categories of men and women. They never claimed that homosexuals could not marry. Thus, their actions did not in of themselves discriminate against homosexuals. The fact that this was de facto something detrimental to homosexuals would have been a plausible reason to oppose it while it was being passed. Once passed, however flawed, it must be respected as in keeping with Universal Law. Judge Walker believes, though, that it is his duty, as a judge, to step in when following the law gives a "wrong" result and "correct" it thus he has betrayed Universal Law.

One wonders as to either his hypocrisy or naiveté. Is he unaware that he has handed a moral blank check to every private citizen with a gun? The fact that their "corrections" of the system might involve blood and bodies and not paper is a matter of little consequence. Gay marriage did not win the day; the real victors are the millions of potential Yigal Amirs, from both the left and the right, sane and intelligent people who make the reasonable calculation that they can advance their legitimate cause by committing crimes, even murder, for the sake of what they believe is right. (See Does Michaeli Makovi Support Anat Kamm?) Either everyone submits themselves to Law, particularly those laws they disagree with, or we will fall into Hobbesian war.

“They Can Say It, We Cannot:” The Haredi Assault on Jewish Law and Jewish Thought

Rabbi Natan Slifkin has an essay "They Can Say It, We Cannot," which responds to an argument of Rabbi Yosef Shalom Elyashiv that certain beliefs, such as the Sages of the Talmud could be wrong about matters of science, could be heretical despite the fact that legitimate Jewish figures held them. Rav Elyashiv claims that these opinions were rejected by Jewish tradition and now we must follow the "majority." So people like Rabbi Abraham Maimonides could believe in rabbinic fallibility, but we cannot. I actually had a similar conversation with a Haredi uncle in Israel. He responded to my claim that I was free to reject non-legalist rabbinic statements (aggadita) because Isaac Abarbanel did it on a regular basis with a "he could do it, we cannot." To which asked whether there was a five hundred year limit on being a heretic.

One of the interesting things about present-day Haredi thought is that it lacks a distinction between law (halacha) and thought (hashkafa) to the extent that these terms might very well cease to be relevant. It would seem that they reject the key distinction between the two, mainly that thought deals with objective reality while law does not. Law goes based on what the established community decides. It is irrelevant if even God says a certain oven is pure or if objective reality says that Yom Kippur is on a certain day. Because of this, we are free to ignore objective reality in law. I can go to court with my walking stick and money belt on the day that "really" is Yom Kippur if the rabbinic establishment says Yom Kippur is on a different day. (Mishnah Rosh HaShana 2:10) I can walk away from the debate between Rashi and Rabbenu Tam over tefillin convinced that Rabbenu Tam was right and still have to put on Rashi tefillin in the morning. In halachic debates in the Talmud and amongst the rabbis of the Middle Ages there is no such thing as a "wrong" opinion; there are just opinions, some that we follow in practice and others that we do not. In terms of the science and Torah debate, this allows us to say, like Rabbi Isaac Herzog, that we still follow laws based on faulty science. We do not have to let Judaism collapse into schisms with every side not eating the homes of the other. Thought is clearly different as there are objective truths and no amount of rabbis saying otherwise can change it. Either God has a body or he does not. (Whether or not one is a heretic for holding either opinion is a separate issue.) King Ahab and his entire court did not have the power to overrule Elijah the Prophet as to the number of gods in existence.

This issue of objective reality is, of course, relevant in terms of one's ability to rule and expect other people to follow. Rabbinic authorities have the right to expect those under them to follow them in terms of law, precisely because it is irrelevant whether they are objectively "right." Even people who disagree with them are obligated to follow them on the presumption that, right or wrong, the "buck" has to stop somewhere. When it comes to thought, the issue of ruling is irrelevant because, by definition, if I believe that my rabbinic authority has made a mistake in his theology then he ceases to be my rabbinic authority and I am no longer even allowed to listen to him.

Haredim seem to want it both ways; that law deals with objective reality and those rabbinic authorities can rule on thought. They assume rabbinic infallibility. This turns every legal decision into a theological one. There is no cause to question my religious credentials if I believe that Rabbenu Tam had the better arguments when it came to tefillin. Haredim would challenge my religious credentials for even believing that Rav Elyashiv is "wrong" in his halachic decisions. On the flip side, they expect their opponents to accept their theology as if it were law.

Now, this brings me to a criticism I have of Rabbi Slifkin. He has been very careful to maintain a respectful stance in regards to the Haredi leadership despite their disrespectful treatment of him. It is an intellectually untenable position. I can never accept the legitimacy of anyone who sees me as illegitimate (i.e. not just wrong, but insane, wicked or otherwise ignorant). To do that would be to legitimize my own illegitimacy. The moment members of the Haredi community went from saying that Rabbi Slifkin was not only wrong but a heretic, there could be no more room for Eilu v'Eilu that both sides are the will of God. (See Rabbi Benjamin Hecht's series of articles on the topic.) Either we who support things like rabbinic fallibility and evolution are right or our opponents are right; there can be no middle ground. We need to be striking back. Anyone who denies evolution denies the righteousness of God, by assuming that God has conned humanity by planting the evidence for the express purpose of convincing us that evolution happened. Why should we treat this any differently from Jews who believe that God needed to send his son down to die for our sins? It would be one thing to give observant Jews the benefit of the doubt for the sake of Orthodox unity. But to allow such Jews to question our orthodoxy, that is unacceptable.

This would also be good political tactics. If the Haredi leadership knew that they were going to be destroying Orthodoxy by making evolution illegitimate maybe they would have held back. We can wash our hands of any responsibility of maintaining a unified Orthodox community. It is the Haredim who declared war on us in support of their heretical theology; they are the ones who bear the responsibility for the consequences.

Send Sholom Rubashkin to South Park: A Modest Proposal

The creators of South Park, Trey Parker and Matt Stone, are known for their often crude but spot-on parodies of public figures and the news of the day. Yesterday, with the input of a friend, I started to hash out an idea for what I think could make for an excellent episode, the Sholom Rubashkin case.

Like most of America, the town of South Park is in the grip of the economic downturn. To their rescue comes Sholom Rubashkin as the music man in a black hat and jacket. Hearing of South Park's famous cows, Rubashkin wishes to build a kosher slaughterhouse in town. The prospect of the new jobs sends the people of South Park into jubilation. They see that Rubashkin is such a moral person; he has a special needs son. Kyle goes to work training to be a shochet, a ritual slaughterer. Cartman and Kenny get jobs at the plant after telling Rubashkin that they are eighteen. The sight of so much meat makes Cartman temporarily take back everything nasty he has ever said about Jews, particularly after Rubashkin gives him control of a giant meat-hook crane and fails to notice how Cartman is using it to rip the lungs out of cows. Kenny falls into a meat grinder and becomes a kosher Kenny dog. Meanwhile, Stan, suspicious of some oddities he witnesses around the plant, begins to investigate. He sneaks in on a secret conversation and discovers that Rubashkin is an Elder of Zion James Bond villain planning to ship in unsuspecting illegal immigrant workers and slaughter them for cheap meat. Sneaking away, Stan finds Kyle and Cartman, the latter needing little convincing, and the three friends confront Rubashkin. Rubashkin is insulted: "How dare you accuse me of being an anti-Semitic caricature." To which Stan responds: "You are an anti-Semitic caricature." A chase ensues through the plant, but the children escape Rubashkin and his hench–Jews and inform the entire town. Kyle's father is outraged and immediately offers to defend Rubashkin pro bono. Kyle addresses his father and the town, telling them that it is fine to have religious ideals and to be careful with what you eat, but these ideals should be matched with a concern with the ethics involved in producing the food. The episode ends with Rubashkin in prison with his hench-Jews, carrying him around in a chair so he does not have to walk four cubits without tzitzit.

As this episode would in no way depict Mohammed nor offend Muslims there is no reason for Comedy Central to censure it.

Raymond Lull as a Model Turn of the Twentieth Century Protestant Missionary

Raymond Lull was a thirteenth century mystic and missionary, who ended his life attempting to preach Christianity to Muslims in Muslim controlled North Africa. Not surprisingly, he served as inspiration for Christian missionaries going into the Muslim world in the nineteenth and twentieth century. Lull's Christianity was doctrinally orthodox enough to be acceptable to Protestants yet radical enough for them to see him as a proto-Protestant. The missionary Samuel M. Zwemer spent most of his life preaching to Muslims and wrote a biography of Lull, Raymund Lull: First Missionary to the Moslems, published in 1902. The book carries an introduction by Robert E. Speer, one of the leading Presbyterian clergymen of early twentieth century America. Speer used Lull to advocate for a particular Christian mindset. Readers may find much of what Speer says familiar to them from contemporary Christian preachers yet it is mixed with a distinctively nineteenth century Whig perspective. While we are generally used to the Whig narrative being used by secularists, it is important to keep in mind that it was invented by Protestants. The Whig narrative allowed them to support religious tolerance, denouncing the coercive methods of medieval Catholicism, while preaching conservative Protestant doctrine.


Speer supported a form of religious tolerance, arguing that:

He [Lull] was a Christian of the modern spirit of Catholicity – neither Roman nor Protestant – a man of spiritual judgment, of divine love. He saw the futility of authority in matters of religion at the time that other were busy with the most devilish expression of belief in authority ever conceived – the Inquisition. (xi)


That being said, Speer saw Lull as a model for arguing from faith experience as opposed to reason and science.

It was in his inner experience of the glorified Christ that we are to look for the secret and source of Raymund Lull's doctrine and life: what he thought, what he was, what he suffered. And this must be true of all true missionaries. They do not go out to Asia and Africa to say, "This is the doctrine of the Christian Church," or "Your science is bad. Look through this microscope and see for yourselves and abandon such error," or "Compare your condition with that of America and see how much more socially beneficial Christianity is than Hinduism, or Confucianism, or fetichism, or Islam." Doubtless all this has its place: the argument from the coherence of Christianity with the facts of the universe, the argument from fruit. But it is also all secondary. The primary thing is personal testimony. "This I have felt. This Christ has done for me. I preach whom I know. …

 The missionary who would do Paul's work or Lull's must be able to preach a living Christ, tested in experience, saved from all pantheistic error by the Incarnation and roots thus sunk in history, and by the Resurrection and the personality thus preserved in God above, but a Christ here and known, lived and ready to be given by life to death, that death may become life. (xiii-xv)


Finally, Lull's example is used to support a study of other religions, but one not grounded in any sort religious pluralism.

Lull had no idea that Christianity was not a complete and sufficient religion. He did not study other religions with the purpose of providing from them ideals which Christianity was supposed to lack. Nor did he propose to reduce out of all religions a common fund of general principles more or less to be found in all and regard these as the ultimate religion. He studied other religions to find out how better to reach the hearts of their adherents with the Gospel, itself perfect and complete, lacking nothing, needing nothing from any other doctrine. (xvii-xviii)

Is Starbucks Kosher?

I am sitting here doing work at my local Starbucks (my way of taking a break from doing work in the library) and what do I find in my research, but a discussion about coffee. Apparently Rabbi David b. Solomon ibn Abi Zimra (Radbaz), living in sixteenth-century Egypt has one of the first references to coffee in halachic literature. He permitted the drinking of coffee, even if it was brewed by gentiles. That being said, he declared:


I do not consent to its being drunk at a meeting place [mesibbah] of non-Jews, for this has some undesirable consequences and the Jews are holy.... And, especially since that beverage has no [pleasing] taste nor odor nor appearance, if it is needed for medicinal purposes one may send for it and have it delivered home. This is done by their leading figures, who would be embarrassed to drink it at such establishment. (Rabbi David b. Solomon ibn Abi Zimra, Responsa 3:637 [Elliot Horowitz, "Coffee, Coffeehouses, and the Nocturnal Rituals of Early Modern Jewry" AJS Review, Vol. 14, No. 1 (Spring, 1989): pg. 22]).


So I guess this is reason to take my latte to go. For information on the kosher status of Starbucks products please see Kosher Starbucks.

Scott Lively Defends America Against the Threat of Gay Nazis on the Daily Show

Yesterday my roommate showed me a clip from Jon Stewart's Daily Show about an anti-homosexual pastor, arguing that homosexuals are exceptionally brutal since they lack any self control.

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I had an even bigger laugh since this pastor was none other than Scott Lively, with whom I had a long series of exchanges several months ago on this very blog. My responses to Lively were more substantive, but not nearly as devastating as what Jason Jones does to him.

Ungodly Words: Toward a Political Philosophy of Heresy (Part V)

(Part I, II, III, IV)




The Community Model leads to a number of interesting possibilities as to how heresy functions on a day-to-day basis. For instance, since the Community Model does not require a text to objectively be in contradiction of a statement of dogma, it would be feasible to claim that something could be completely true and at the same time be completely heretical without in any way denying the legitimacy of a statement of dogma. Take the issue of evolution for example. As most of my readers would surely agree it is theoretically possible to reconcile the claims of evolution with the opening chapters of Genesis, but one, with some legitimacy, could argue that even though the theory of evolution may not really contradict the Bible and may even be true; still the Jewish community cannot afford to ever officially admit that possibility. The problem for the Jewish community in doing so is that we would be admitting that the biblical text can and should be reinterpreted in light of the findings of modern science. This fact, while arguably true, opens up a Pandora's Box. What is to happen when Zayd wakes up tomorrow and decides that he is a "homosexual?" He will come to the conclusion that since science has shown that the creation story does not really mean what he was taught it meant in heder (religious primary school), maybe those verses in Leviticus do not actually mean what he was always taught they meant, now that modern psychiatry has "demonstrated" that homosexuality is not an illness, but a "perfectly normal" style of behavior. (Note that the concepts of mental "illness" and "normal" behavior are value judgments and thus outside of any empirical proof or demonstration.) In light of this "scientific" discovery Zayd could claim that it should be assumed that the verse "thou shall not lie with a man in the manner one lies with a woman, it is an abomination," (Leviticus 18:22) is not meant to ban "healthy," "loving" relationships between homosexual men, who technically speaking are not anyway carrying out relations with each other in the same manner as a man and a woman. (See Michael Lerner's Jewish Renewal pg. 324-327.) Rather the text is only meant to ban homosexual men from claiming that their relationships are equivalent to heterosexual marriage. Personally I think it is far more dangerous for Zayd to think that Judaism is against science than for Zayd to become an active Orthodox homosexual, but that is just me.

The central issue for me surrounding the Community Model is that if we were to accept this notion that texts should be defined as being heretical based on the decision of the community then the whole notion of heresy becomes tied to the issue of defining community. Without a clearly defined community structure there can be no heretical texts. For example one could argue that we, in this post-Enlightenment world of ours, cannot with any legitimacy speak of a Jewish community. While a Jew may belong to a synagogue, only associate with other Jews, and live his life according to Jewish Law, none of these things have any innate authority over him, as they once did. Any authority that these things do have comes from the willingness of the individual to defer to them. So in fact when the individual follows rabbinic authority or the standards of his "community," he is merely following the dictates of his own conscience. If this is the case then heresy becomes the broken staff of a deposed king. The fact that this staff is still being waved encapsulates in of itself the very nature of the power structure that wields it. It has ceased to exist yet it still thinks that it does, which following Cartesian logic confers its own form of existence upon it.

So I put the challenge to my readers. What would you do if you saw your fellow Jew reading a book titled: "There is No God. If There Was One He Would Be Four Beings, Physical, Not Eternal, Not Worth Praying To and Not a Talker to Prophets Nor a Giver of Torahs. If He Would Have Given a Torah He Would Have Changed it and He Would Never Have Bothered With Anything So Foolish as Reward and Punishment, a Messiah or the Revival of the Dead?" Would you try to explain to this Jew that such a book is dangerous and if so who is it dangerous to? Would you attempt to confiscate this book; if so, by what means and by what authority? Would you claim that this Jew is actually committing a sin by continuing to read that book and if so what sin has he committed?

Ungodly Words: Toward a Political Philosophy of Heresy (Part IV)

(Part I, II, III)


The Historical Model would have us ignore the question of what the author did or did not intend and instead have us look at how a text has historically been interpreted. The advantage this model possesses over the previous two models is that it forces us to evaluate texts within the context of the real world, not just the imagination of individuals. The Historical Model becomes problematic though once we consider the issue of whose opinions exactly are we supposed to view as relevant. If we were serious about following this model we would have to declare parts of the bible to be heretical because there are numerous passages in the bible that Christians have interpreted as being in support of their beliefs. Take the Suffering Servant passage of Isaiah 53 for example. Christians have claimed since the Book of Acts that Isaiah was prophesying that the Messiah was going to allow himself to be murdered in an excruciating fashion and thereby atone for the sins of all mankind. If we are to take the Historical Model for evaluating heresy then it should be irrelevant that Christians have grossly misinterpreted this passage. The fact that they have understood this passage in the manner that they do and that they so greatly outnumber us should force us to admit that, no matter what Isaiah may have meant, today, in the twenty-first century, Isaiah's suffering servant refers to Jesus and must be removed from our Bibles. I alluded, earlier in this essay, to Strauss' view that Maimonides held secret beliefs that most Orthodox Jews would classify as heretical. If we were to follow the Historical Model we would have to at the very least suspect that maybe, in the fifty years since Strauss made this claim, enough Jewish Studies Professors have bought into Strauss' claim to form a critical mass, making the Guide forbidden to read. It does not stop there because Strauss also claimed that Maimonides wrote the Mishnah Torah as part of his cover so we would also potentially have to throw out the Mishnah Torah as well.

As I mentioned there is something going in favor of the Historical Model in that it makes as its primary issue a text's functioning in the real world. I would only modify the Historical Model to limit who has a say in what a text means. I would say that first of all, for the purposes of a given community, this conversation is limited to what members of that community have been saying about a text
and even furthermore that the power to define texts as heretical resides not within individuals but within in the body of the formal community itself. In this Community Model, the community, or the people who lead the community, come to the understanding that allowing a certain text to be freely circulated through the community would be detrimental to the community's ongoing health or that to allow an idea to take a legitimate place within the public discourse would prove harmful. The community, therefore, takes action and physically rids itself of the offending text making it impossible for certain ideas to enter the public discourse.

For practical purposes it is not possible for the Jewish community to allow Zayd to wake up one morning and think to himself: "Maybe Jesus is my Lord and Savior. Let me read this book the gentiles call 'the New Testament' to help me come to some conclusions." The problem is not just that Zayd might actually come to conclusions that the community would not approve of, but even if the proper conclusions were to be reached the mere fact that such an issue could be put on the table undermines the community by making it possible to challenge its foundations. (I am not saying that such an attitude is necessarily wrong per se or bad for the individual. I am simply saying that such an attitude works against the interests of the community and it is in the interests of the community itself to guard against such attitudes.) If community spokesperson, Umar, makes a statement of dogma then ideally it would be in the best interests of the community for Zayd to accept that dogma out of the belief that since a statement of dogma is in accordance with the absolute rules of the community and the community cannot be wrong therefore a statement of dogma itself cannot be wrong. More than that, it is important that Zayd not even seriously ask the question: "could it be otherwise?" Once we have Zayd choosing to follow a statement of dogma because he understands that the statement of dogma is in accordance with the rules of the community which he, at present, is choosing to accept as an absolute then both the dogma and the rules of the community cease to be absolutes. The reason for this is that, even though Zayd in either case may end up doing the same action, the reasoning in the latter case, unlike the former, has Zayd following the dictates of the community because it is in keeping with the dictates of his own beliefs. In this situation, the de facto decider of any issue is not the community, but Zayd.

Ungodly Words: Toward a Political Philosophy of Heresy (Part III)

(Part I, II)

At the same time that I am marching into Jewish homes confiscating all Uncle Moishy tapes for their Pantheist heresies, I could also be going around putting a Hechser (kosher symbol) on all sorts of "dangerous" texts. In dealing with the Gospels one could argue make a plausible argument that the writers of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and possibly even John did not believe that Jesus was part of a divine Trinity but simply believed that Jesus was the Messiah and the physical embodiment of the Law. This in fact was the view of the great medieval Jewish apologist Profiat Duran. Duran in fact goes so far as to call Jesus a "pious fool." Duran believed that the early Christians were good pious Jews, who were mistaken in certain matters. (See "Toward Formulating a Jewish View of Jesus.") Imagine for a second that Christianity had remained and died as an obscure first-century Jewish sect leaving nothing behind for us except the Gospels. Would we view them as "the New Testament?" More likely we would see them as the harmless writings of a group of Jews who lived a long time ago, who were followers of a Messiah who did not pan out and who got themselves into some heated verbal exchanges with the more mainstream rabbinate just like the Dead Sea Sect. In this scenario, if Zayd were to be caught with a copy of the New Testament, cross on the cover and all, underneath his shtender (reading lectern) it is highly unlikely that he would be thrown out of Shul (synagogue) or that anyone would bother to even confiscate the book. If we view heresy strictly in terms of what is the most plausible interpretation of the text then we have license to ignore, in making our judgments, any considerations of the historical trappings that can come in a text's wake. In looking at the Gospels, the Council of Nicea, Christianity, and the past two thousand years of anti-Semitism in the Western world would become irrelevant.

The Authorship Model would have us admit that we cannot reach any conclusions as to the heretical nature of a text simply from the text itself but that we must rather decide as to the heretical nature of a text based on what the author intended his text to mean. If this is the case then the imperative question that one has to ask about any text is did the author intend by the text to make claims that are in contradiction to set Jewish dogmas. This would get us out of the Uncle Moishy problem because it would allow Suki and Ding, assuming we decided to believe their public statements, to declare that they do not have any Pantheist messages in their songs and that all they meant to say was that God's authority and awareness extend to all places.

The first issue in regards to the Authorship Model is that like the Interpretive Model it turns away from the issue of how a text has fared in the real world. In fact, the Authorship Model would stick us into the mire even deeper because not only would it allow us to not take the issue into account, it would expressly forbid us from even considering it.

The second issue in regards to the Authorship Model is that one has to ask whether we are declaring any text written by a heretical author to be heretical or whether we are simply declaring only the texts of heretical authors that, in themselves, make heretical assumptions. Either way is problematic. If we are to say the former then we would have to conclude that any text that was written by someone who was not either an Orthodox Jew is heretical. This would mean that over 99.9% of all books in the world are heretical, including books on such subjects as mathematics, music, cooking, and sewing. This I guess would make some in Haredi circles happy, except that this does not end there. We would have to continue and apply the same rules to the spoken word since direct speech is potentially at least as dangerous as the written text. This would mean that no Jewish school would be able to hire a teacher who was not an Orthodox Jew to teach anything, not even that the sky is blue, since that statement is part of a larger "body" of work that is heretical. To take the matter even further if your gentile neighbor tried to wish you "good morning" you would have to cover your ears and run away lest you be exposed to heresy. If we are to allow texts and statements of heretical authors to be read as long as the texts themselves do not contain heresy we would simply run into other problems. What is heretical about John 3:16? The text 'G-d,' 'so,' 'loved,' 'the,' 'world,' or 'Son.' We cannot possibly declare that the author meant to make heretical statements with individual words, but at what point are texts large enough that we can say that the author meant something heretical by it; does a text have to be a complete sentence, paragraph or an entire book in order for it to be heretical? Where does one place the location of the author's heretical intentions?

The third issue that I would raise is the case where the author intended the text to mean something heretical but either was not trying to convince the reader to accept the heretical assumptions of the text or was even trying to refute the heretical assumptions of the text. Take Kierkegaard's Either/Or in which Kierkegaard wrote in the character of 'A' who is an aesthete. Now many of the aesthete's statements are intended to go against conventional dogmas but it was not Kierkegaard's intention to try to convince people to follow the aesthete's worldview; are we to say that Either/Or is still heretical? How for that matter are we to deal with a volume of Jewish anti-missionary literature? Are we to say that, because they quote texts that contradict set dogmas, they are heretical?