Reflections on the Autism Speaks Protest

So I spent Sunday morning protesting the Autism Speaks Walk. I took part in the protest as an associate of ASAN. I am not, though, an actual member of the group even if I did originally help found the Columbus chapter and even if I continue to view it as my family here. For this reason nothing that I say should be taken as representative of ASAN, a liberating position if at times I am critical of them. (Melanie, Noranne and Aspitude have already posted on the event so see them for an alternative perspective.)

We had a dozen or so people, Autism Speaks had about eighteen thousand so it gives an idea about what we are up against. Standing around waving signs is not an ideal way to win friends and influence people in the best of circumstances. In our case, the area we were given by the university to protest was away from the arena where the walk was being held, across a giant parking lot, across a busy street. People driving into the parking lot could see us and the end of the Walk was right by us, but other than that we were irrelevant. I know someone in the OSU band, who performed at the event, and she told me later that she was unaware that we were even there. Maybe it would have helped if we could have provoked some sort of reaction. In truth, though, besides for the occasional catcall of "you're stupid," "get a life" or "go home" we were pretty much ignored as we deserved. Why should anyone pay attention to some people waving signs? If anything the people of Autism Speaks were very nice to us. One of the organizers came out to offer us water if we needed it (we had brought plenty of our own). If we did not succeed on the ground we did succeed where it counts most in the twenty-first century, media. We were interviewed by the local ABC and NBC stations. The credit for those needs to go to our front office, particularly Ari Ne'eman, and to those in our group who made the phone calls. State representative Ted Celeste also stopped by. Representative Celeste is a good friend of the group, whom we have spoken to multiple times in the past. He apologized to us for having a puzzle pin on his lapel, knowing our strong opposition to its use. The fact that Celeste bothered to even talk to us in such an environment (we being outnumbered more than a thousand to one) says a lot about him.

I can only admire Autism Speaks for creating the sort of trans-generational, trans-community networks that they have. Central to their fundraising and what the Walk is meant to demonstrate is that autism is first off a family issue and second a community issue. For this reason you did not have just autistic children walking, but their entire families as well. And not just families, you had large groups of friends and neighbors as well so surrounding every autistic child is a large "team" of support. Now as someone from the group pointed out, this entire Walk was designed with neurotypicals in mind and not autistics. One can only imagine the hell some of these kids were being put through, taken off of their schedules to a place with lots of noise and people running around. A step in the right direction for Autism Speaks would be if it would openly fashion itself not as an organization for autistics, particularly as autistics are not represented in its leadership, but as a support group for the parents of autistics. However difficult it might be to go through life autistic, it cannot compare to the challenges of being the parent of an autistic child. These parents need and deserve the support of their families and communities.

This brings us to the trap that Autism Speaks has maneuvered us into, one that we have failed to solve and until we do we will not be able to stand up Autism Speaks in the public arena; Autism Speaks has pitted us, not against their front office, but against the parents of autistic children. Say what you want about the front office, their eugenics policies and their misuse of funds, but that is not going to help you deal with a parent grasping for solutions in the here and now. The toughest moment of the Walk for me was not the taunts (I am a brawler and cannot resist a fight); it was when that organizer, who offered us water, followed up by asking us who is going to speak for his son who is unable to speak. I admit that the person is not me. I have not spent a single day being the parent for that man's kid nor do I have the solution to his problems. The most that I can say is that I am the obvious ally, who would be willing to help him, as long as I am not alienated by talk of disease and cure, lines of discourse that will make it nearly impossible for me to hold down a job and eventually get married. There was a good conversation with him and the group and he was really nice to us. We spoke about advances in communication technology that offers alternatives to verbal speech. After the man left someone from the group made a crack that the man was prejudiced with his talk of "all people communicate by talking" Fine, maybe they are right and this man suffers from petty prejudices (don't we all); that simply dodges the real issue at hand that this man is on the front lines dealing with the real challenges of autism and we do not have any readymade solutions to offer.

What we need to have is a dialogue with the parents. All this rhetoric about Autism Speaks giving out $600,000 salaries and only spending four cents to the dollar on families very well may be true, but that simply makes us sound like every other political group this time of year going negative against the opposition. I do not wish to fight all those parents, friends and family who came to the Walk and they certainly deserve better than political attack ads. If given the chance, here is what I would want to say to them: I acknowledge the difficult situation that you are in and that I am in no position to judge you as to whether you are truly "tolerant." As someone on the autism spectrum I am incredibly fortunate in ways that many of your children are not and because of that I feel a sense of responsibility. Whatever the future of autism holds I am here with you for the ride. That being said we need to consider some hard realities. First off, whatever theoretical debates we can have about using a magic pill to cure autism, no magic pill is on the horizon. This leaves us with ever improving methods of schooling and therapy, all of which will remain expensive. Secondly genetic screening and finding out the root causes of autism is not going to help a single child with autism presently. Thirdly, every one of your autistic children is going to become an autistic adult and that is going to require a system of its own that is not in place at present. Autism Speaks, for all of its high sounding rhetoric, offers nothing to help you with any of these real issues. For your sakes and more importantly for the sake of your children you need to start talking to other people; perhaps to people who are on the spectrum, but are still leading productive lives. They might not be able to offer you a cure, but they can at least open up a serious conversation as to how live with autism.

Getting Ready to Protest Autism Speaks

Tomorrow morning I will be joining my friend Melanie and the rest of the gang from ASAN over at the Ohio State campus for the annual Autism Speaks Walk. We will be protesting. Those of my readers who are in the area please feel free to come along.

While this is a protest, I also like to think of it as a celebration. The Autism Speaks walk is a birthday of sorts for us. It was two years ago that I and other members of the Aspirations support group went to the Walk in good faith. Being new to autism advocacy I was not familiar with Autism Speaks ideology. At the Walk I learned from, President Gee of Ohio State no less, that I was a disease that needed to be eradicated. Wishing to take action, Melanie first wrote a letter to President Gee. Later she decided to create a chapter of ASAN and recruited me as her co-chair. So tomorrow we will not just be standing up to neurotypical bigots determined to eliminate us from the gene pool, we will also be taking the time to celebrate legitimate autism advocacy, one in which autistic people actually get to speak instead of being spoken for.

Catching Up on Things: History 111 Fall 2010

Sorry for being offline for the past two weeks. This past month, just in time for our string of three-day Jewish holidays, I moved back to Columbus and started teaching again at Ohio State. On top of all this, I did not have an internet connection at my apartment until last night. (While I might miss New York and Silver Spring, what I am paying for my half of a two-bedroom apartment goes a long way to making up for things.) I hope to be back posting on a regular basis, though likely a little less often than earlier in the year.

So to get things back on track, I would like to invite everyone on board my new teaching experiment. For this quarter I decided to run my History 111 class as a book club. Instead of using one textbook and doing a survey of European history from antiquity up until the Enlightenment, we will be doing a series of shorter books on specific topics. Ideally, I would like to do secondary sources, but I am open to doing primary sources and even good historical fiction. While I picked the first book, Bart Ehrman's Peter, Paul & Mary Magdalene: The Followers of Jesus in History and Legend, subsequent books are to be picked by the class. We have already voted for the next book, Robert Harris's novel Imperium, which deals with the life of the Roman orator Cicero as told by his servant Tiro. It is similar to Robert Graves' I, Claudius, though it is, I believe, more accessible to a general audience.

I was inspired to do this in part by the wonderful book club I have here in Columbus and in part by my desire to take Alfie Kohn seriously to see what might come about with implementing some of his ideas. (See The Book Club: or How to Destroy School.) If the Alfie Kohn model of education could work anywhere it should be in a college where there is at least some degree of self-motivation among students. By allowing students to pick what books we read I am allowing the opportunity to structure the class to suit them. I still will be maintaining graded assignments, including homework. For example, as in previous years, students are supposed to email me a question or comment about the reading before class. (An idea I took from Prof. Louis Feldman.) I then structure my talk around responding to these questions. That being said, this is a rather open-ended assignment and serves to further make room for student input.

What attracted me to Ehrman was, one, he writes about the historical Jesus and early Christianity, topics of popular interest. He writes in a balanced fashion which, while not openly hostile to orthodox religious sensibilities does a very effective job of explaining how an academic approach differs from an orthodox one and for its superiority. Two, Ehrman provides an entry into the historical method as he talks his way through texts and how to use them. What Ehrman does to the New Testament is what historians do to all texts, sacred or otherwise. Part of what is subversive about the historical method, a Pandora's Box so to speak, is that it is impossible to accept it partway. If you accept the historical method then you commit yourself to applying it to all texts, the Bible just as much as Julius Caesar. Regardless of how orthodox your eventual conclusions, the moment you agree to subject the Bible to the same cross-examination as any other text you have put a knife into orthodoxy, committing yourself to the Kantian charge of placing everything before the bar of reason. There can be no return to innocent belief.

So this experiment seems to be going well even if I seem to be speaking a lot more than I might have liked. If anyone has book recommendations, please feel free to post them.

Does God Hate Deaf People? Toward New Bible Based Bigotry

In addition to the black civil rights movement, my own Asperger advocacy makes use of the models of deaf advocacy and the gay rights movement. Both are examples of groups that have been able to bring mainstream respectability to something traditionally looked down upon by society. I admire the gay rights movement in that they were able to get themselves off the listing as a psychological illness. The deaf community, going back even to the nineteenth century, has been successful, through the creation of sign language, in forming a deaf culture and by so doing has helped redefine how we think of disability, creating a social model of disability. Once you have a culture with language, literature, and artists then you can longer be defined by what you lack, say hearing, and can insist on being treated like every other culture. Furthermore, the deaf community has in the case of cochlear implants been able to fend off attempts at "curing" them even from the mainstream medical establishment.

In advocating for myself and others on the spectrum, my goals are first to get away from the medical model used by groups such as Autism Speaks, where autism is a disease to be cured, and move toward a social model of disability, where autism is viewed as an alternative and equally valid way of processing information and dealing with the world. This is neurodiversity. In the long run, I would hope to see certain elements of the autism spectrum, like Asperger syndrome, taken off the diagnostic list and turned simply into another social and cultural group.

In talking about neurodiversity with people, I make frequent use of both the deaf and gay models. For obvious reasons, when I am in more conservative company I shy away from talking about gay rights and focus more on the deaf example. Who would object to the idea that being deaf is a culture no different than Spanish, Irish, or Jewish, that one could create a perfectly functional society without the use of hearing and that there is nothing wrong about being deaf that is in need of being cured? I was mistaken in this assumption.

I was recently talking to a religious person about Asperger syndrome, using the deaf example, when the person responded that being deaf went against nature; God created people with ears so, therefore, lacking the use of one's hearing was a defect not intended by God. I pressed the person, arguing that hearing is not necessary for living one's life and that perhaps human beings will evolve away from being dependent on hearing. (Bats still have eyes even though they rely primarily on a biological sonar to see.) At this point, that person retorted that the Bible spoke about deafness as an impairment. I let the conversation end by noting that I was not talking theology and that, under a secular system of politics, it is irrelevant. I would have liked to continue and ask the person whether they were willing to follow through with the implications of their views. Should we allow deaf people to do such non-Bible sanctioned activities as voting, serving on juries, or even as witnesses? What business do deaf people have in thinking they can create their own non-sound-based language? Was it among the languages used after the Tower of Babel? Might all this deaf culture really be a secular liberal plot to undermine our Bible-based traditional aural values?

I am used to the Bible being used to object to gay rights. Apparently, there are those who might consider using it against the deaf. I guess we should be grateful that the issue of deaf rights has flown below the radar screen of certain people otherwise we might end up with a defend the sanctity of aurality movement.

The Bard and the Mouse

I recently attended the Shakespeare Theatre Company's production of All's Well That Ends Well. It is not one of Shakespeare's better plays. The central plot is about a woman named Helena, who falls in love with Count Bertram, who rejects her. Helena succeeds in curing the King of France of an ailment with the help of a medical secret left to her by her late physician father. As a reward, she is given the choice of any man in the kingdom. She chooses Bertram. Bertram, though, runs off to Florence, resolving to never accept Helena as his wife until she can produce his ring on her finger and his child inside her. Helena pursues her Count and discovers that is seeking to bed Diana, the daughter of an innkeeper. Helena manages to switch places and gain Bertram's ring and baby. So we have a lead female character defined by her supposed intelligence and her willingness to throw herself after a man who neither wants nor deserves her. Bertram is someone who spends the entire play being a complete louse yet nothing bad actually happens to him. At the end of the play he is humiliated, but for some strange reason is now in love with the cause of his misfortune. I find this more problematic than anything in Taming of the Shrew.

There is one bright spot in the play in that, like all Shakespearean comedy, All's Well features a great comic side character, the foppish and cowardly Parolles. Parolles gets a deliciously naughty back and forth with Helena at the beginning on the uselessness of virginity and, later on, is tricked by his comrades into believing that he has been captured by the enemy and promptly agrees to sell out his own side. All's Well is worth it simply as an exercise in how Shakespeare relied on side characters, usually of relatively base origin, as comic relief and commentary on the higher born main characters. Parolles is essentially Falstaff of Henry IV parts I and II and Merry Wives of Windsor. Much Ado About Nothing has Constable Dogberry and Midsummer's Night's Dream has Puck and Bottom. All of these characters, in the hands of the right actors, are quite easily capable of taking over their respective plays.

There is another institution in modern times that does this, Disney. From almost the beginning, when Disney started to make full-length animation films, it worked on a model of taking well-established stories, adding in a few musical numbers and some wisecracking sidekicks. Pinocchio got Jiminy Cricket, a cat and a fish and Cinderella a band of talking mice. Flash forward to the more recent era of Disney animation, Little Mermaid gets a talking crab and a pair of henchmen eels; Beauty and the Beast gets talking dishes and Aladdin, a monkey and a parrot. It is almost always these side characters who are the most interesting parts of the film to the extent that the films would not work without them even though they are not that important to the actual plot.  

Considering all this, it is surprising that, with the exception of Lion King (Hamlet in the Sahara, complete with an evil uncle, a murdered king, a dithering hero and a ghost), Disney has not ventured to do Shakespeare. I, for one, would be curious to see what Disney could do with Midsummer's Night's Dream or The Tempest. Then again, considering what they did with The Hunchback of Notre Dame, maybe not.

Social Networking and Bank Robbery: Some Thoughts on The Town

Last night I went along with a friend to a sneak preview of The Town, directed by and starring Ben Affleck, unfortunately (to be fair he is actually watchable in this movie), but also featuring Mad Men's Jon Hamm. The premise of the film lies in the fact that Charlestown, a working-class neighborhood in Boston, has the highest rate in the world of producing bank robbers. To my mind, speculating as to the cause of such a phenomenon begs one to combine Sudhir Venkatesh's Gang Leader for a Day, in which discusses gangs and the economics of drug dealing, with Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers and Tipping Point. Outliers examines the societal features that enable those with genius and extreme talent to succeed. Tipping Point deals with what sort of social connections necessary to transmit ideas. Gladwell is mainly interested in phenomena like hockey players in Canada, the computer revolution and Jewish lawyers, but his argument could be applied to bank robbery.

The vast majority of people growing up in a place like Charlestown do not go out and become bank robbers. That being said, there are certain features in growing up in Charlestown that can enable such life choices. Robbing banks requires a certain level of intelligence and technical expertise. Our potential bank robber needs to be intelligent enough to work through the details of a bank job plan but be unable to get the education and social connections necessary to enter into more lucrative and physically less hazardous fields of crime such as investment fraud. Think of what might have happened to Bernie Madoff if he had never received the sorts of opportunities he did; maybe he would have been knocking over banks at the point of a gun. Once our bank robber has decided on his chosen career, he is going to need particular training of a kind not generally provided in school; things such as firearms, forensics, carjacking a getaway vehicle, video surveillance and safe-cracking. It is unlikely that one person would be able to master all of these things, which brings us to the social networking aspect of bank robbery. Robbing a bank is a team effort. Where does our bank robber find a group of other intelligent criminals, who have not gone into white collar crime, to be trusted to guard his back and not simply turn him over to the government? (Certainly not on Facebook.) The same place he went to in order to learn the trade in the first place, friends, and family. A place like Charlestown can produce bank robbers because it already has the people on the ground to pass on their knowledge and form social networks to produce new generations of bank robbers.

I would have loved to see a movie that really explored these issues. Going on a spree of bank robberies could be the culmination of a story going back decades as we follow our young future criminals on their road to bank robbery. Unfortunately, the movie decided to only deal with the social networking issues in passing in order to make way for, what Hollywood loves turning everything into, a love story. You see there is this pretty female witness briefly taken hostage in the film's opening robbery, who might be able to give our team of bank robbers away even though they had masks. The leader of the team (played by Ben Affleck) takes it upon himself sniff out what she might know and promptly falls in love with her, setting up all sorts of obvious complications. This plotline does culminate in one useful line. When the girl confronts Ben Affleck about the truth and asks him why she should believe him, he responds: "because you are not going to like what I am going to tell you." As a historian, this is a central foundation of how we evaluate information. You can gauge the truth based on how damaging it is to the speaker; incrimination equals truth.

Not that this is a bad film. On technical grounds, the film performs well; it is well written, directed, shot, and acted. There is plenty of action and good laugh lines, particularly with the sequence when they hold up an armored vehicle with assault rifles and nun's costumes. I defiantly enjoyed watching the movie and do recommend it.

Making Religion Asperger Friendly (More Texts, More Rituals and More Opportunities to be Sociable Without Having to Actually Talk to People)

There is a running debate as to the relationship between Asperger syndrome and atheism. Are Aspergers more likely than the general population to be atheists and if so why? (See John Elder Robison and James Pate) I certainly know a number of Asperger atheists and anecdotal experience indicates that people on the spectrum are more secular than the general population. I think it has less to do with religion or no religion than it does about what type of religion. The Asperger mind is not socially based like that of most people, but is more rule-based. One does not relate to people, but to abstract ideas and concepts. This creates a problem in that, not surprisingly, most religions were designed and evolved from a neurotypical perspective and to suit neurotypical needs. Particularly, they rely on social relationships as a means of forming and maintaining themselves. For the purposes of this post I will limit myself to the case of Orthodox Judaism and my own personal experience with it; I would be interested in hearing from those with practical experience with other religions as to what extent what I say here is relevant.

Judaism, as a minority and often persecuted religion, evolved a strong sense of its own vulnerability and of the need to take active measures to pass itself on to the next generation and keep its youth in the fold. What many of these methods have in common are that they rely on creating attachments to other people and, as such, are distinctively ill suited for dealing with Aspergers. Thinking in terms of my own personal experience growing up, it was no good to tell me that I was part of a link in a chain of tradition [mesorah] connecting me to my parents and grandparents and ultimately to the Exodus and the Revelation at Mount Sinai. Regardless of what I might think of the historicity of these claims, the very concept of being attached to other people was foreign to me. (As a historian let me add that the notion that you could have a tradition connecting one generation to the next to the extent that one can draw straight lines and use equal signs is an absurdity.) I was never very good at forming an attachment to a rabbi to learn from. I never found praying as part of a quorum to be spiritually uplifting. The threat of what the people around me were going to think was not going to keep me in line; I was usually blissfully unaware of what other people were thinking.

Orthodox Judaism, though, does have certain features that did speak to me; these have played a major role in keeping me within that orbit. Texts play a major role in Orthodox Judaism and, while I might not relate well to people, I do relate to texts. I might not have taken well to Talmud and being in an environment that forced me to study the subject nearly did me in. I did, though, develop an attachment to the Bible and the commentary of Isaac Abarbanel; reading him for hours on end was certainly a spiritually edifying endeavor. Something should also be said about the role of ritual; Judaism offers things for me to do every day to structure my life. If I were a Christian I do not know how I would deal with my "getting right with God;" am I a good Christian, living up to the Sermon on the Mount? As I Jew, I can wash my hands in the morning, pray, eat kosher food and believe that I am at least on the right track to forming a relationship with God. (One of the ironies of Christianity is that, while it claimed to replace the unfulfillable demands of an Old Testament deity, it is the religion that is truly unfulfillable.)

I would like to end with something that occurred to me over the previous days of Rosh Hashanah, which may sound somewhat counter-intuitive. Being stuck in a room for six hours, two straight days, reciting texts is enough to get anyone to start asking some serious questions about what he is doing and why he is doing it. My father once pointed out to me that Jewish prayer is not very interactive and, if you are an outsider experiencing it for the first time, it can prove quite boring. Most of it consists of people reciting things under their breath and a cantor to pace everyone. Ironically enough, this actually works very well for me because it allows me to be "sociable," for hours on end even, on my terms, without actually having to talk to another human being. I get to read, meditate and think about the things that I like to think about and that I normally do by myself in my room. Now, since I am doing all of this, not in my private bedroom but in a room full of other people, what was something that might have invited reprimands for being anti-social, becomes the exact opposite. Now that I have been such a good sociable person for hours on end no one should be able to deny that I have earned the right to turn back into myself to my heart's content for a few days.

This is one Asperger Jew's take on thing.

The English Language Makes Me Laugh Loudly and Immoderately

Those who have spent any significant time with me in person know that I have a rather strange laugh, something in between a hyena laughing and donkey braying. Children tend to get a kick out of my laugh, particularly when it is accompanied by me chasing after them and pontificating on the health benefits of medieval surgery and working in the mines. Adults, for some strange reason, tend to find my laugh grating and bothersome.


Recently, thanks to dictionary.com's word of the day, I discovered the word "caCHINNate."

"Cachinnate \KAK-uh-neyt\, verb: To laugh loudly or immoderately."
So the next time, someone asks me where I got such a god-awful laugh, I can respond: "Don't look at me. I am just an innocent victim of the English language."

Rebbe Judaism, the Vilna Gaon and Kupat Ha’ir

I am sitting in my room flipping through the latest Kupat Ha'ir brochure, declaring that Haredi Gedolim have ASSURED contributors "a good, sweet, year with no distress or serious ailments." Back in my day, it was enough to simply wish people a "sweet new year," a "good signing and sealing" and believe that "repentance, prayer, and charity overturn evil decrees." According to the brochure, Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky and Rabbi Aharon Leib Steinman are in the habit of meeting to discuss Kupat Ha'ir. "Why? There's no answer to this question. It's impossible for human logic to fathom." For those of us still bound by in the realm of human logic, Rabbi Kanievsky informs us that Kupat Ha'ir is the reason why we have not had a "Second Holocaust."

What really caught my attention in this brochure was the fact that it mentions the eighteenth century Rabbi Elijah of Vilna (the Vilna Gaon), comparing the crowds gathering outside to catch a glimpse of Rabbi Kanievsky and Rabbi Steinman talking about Kupat Ha'ir to the people, who supposedly gathered in the town of Meretz to catch a glimpse of Rabbi Elijah of Vilna when he visited. As anyone familiar with Jewish history will tell you, Rabbi Elijah of Vilna was a highly reclusive individual, who hardly left his house, and was hardly, during his lifetime, the sort of famous personality to attract crowds. His one major public act was the excommunication ban on the early Hasidic movement and his subsequent campaign against them.

One of the major shifts in Orthodox Judaism over the past few decades has been the "Hasidic" turn even among Lithuanian Jews, who claim ideological descent from Rabbi Elijah of Vilna. As Kupat Ha'ir is a good example of, even Lithuanian rabbis now offer blessings and claim miraculous powers; the sort of thing that used to be the province of Hasidic rebbes.

If Rabbi Elijah of Vilna were around today, he surely would point to Kupat Ha'ir as an example of how necessary it was to excommunicate Hasidim in the eighteenth century and proceed to excommunicate those presently involved with Kupat Ha'ir. So, how about it.

Isaac Asimov and the Submission to Law

In an earlier post, I spoke about the necessity of submission to Law as a form of salvation from "every man doing what is right in their eyes." I was recently reading an Isaac Asimov novel, The Stars, Like Dust, that, in its own way made a similar point.

Before I continue, I might as well say something about the novel as a whole. It is very typical Isaac Asimov, both in its strengths and weaknesses. It is a pan-galactic mystery novel with a square-jawed hero, Biron Farril, a female companion, Artemisia oth Hinriad, who serves no purpose but to be a mindless damsel in distress and fall madly in love with the hero midway through the book, and a wise old comically endearing scientist, Gilbret, to serve as the voice of reason, off on an adventure through space. Writing in 1951, Asimov did an incredible job covering the technicalities of hyperspace travel with plausible sounding jargon. That being said, he has his characters stick paper labels on ship controls, and smoke cigarettes on a space ship. One can only imagine: "Welcome aboard my spaceship. Please take a cigarette. No need to worry about such primitive diseases as lung cancer; you will be blown to bits by the exploding oxygen long before that." Asimov had this problem covered by something even more bizarre. He seemed to have assumed that it is necessary to constantly breathe in carbon so his spaceships have carbon in their atmosphere and his spacesuits have small carbon emitters. I have no idea where he got that idea. Perhaps one of my readers who know something about 1950s science could help me out here.

Our heroes, Biron, Artemisia and Gilbret are on the run in a stolen space cruiser from the evil Tyrannians (pun very much intended). Seeking to free the Nebula Kingdoms, our heroes search for the hidden rebel world. Along the way, another mystery keeps floating over their heads; there are references to a secret document from ancient Earth that if ever revealed would destroy the Tyrannians. While fighting for freedom and justice, our heroes have a problem; they are all noblemen and, as such, illegitimately rule over their subjects just much as the Tyrannians do over them. In fighting against the Tyrannians are they merely seeking to replace them? This ceases to be an idle question when they come up against a rebel leader who is trying to do precisely that.

After many twists and turns (and Asimov was nothing if not clever), our heroes finally find the rebellion and meet its leader. The leader, it turns out, has heard of the secret document from Earth and even has it in his possession. Biron breathlessly asks the leader to reveal what is in this document; how could a mere document be so powerful as to destroy an empire? The leader explains that, yes, this document, once revealed, will destroy the Tyrannians as well as the nobility, paving the way for a truly just government. He begins to recite the text by heart: "We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."

And the novel ends just like that.

There is a simple beauty to Asimov with his utter faith in classical liberal principles, that a free society combined with scientific rationalism could bring the salvation of society. As ironic as this might sound talking about an agnostic scientific rationalist, but, in reading Asimov, I cannot help but feel overwhelmed by the force of his faith as it demands that I too submit myself to the power of such law and put my faith in it. (See also On the Comforts of Reading Isaac Asimov.)

Staying in the Fold: Does Belief Actually Matter?

Rabbi Yakov Horowitz is in the process of writing about keeping Jewish children "on the Derech" (in the fold). So far he has written a top ten list of things parents can do to have a decent chance of being able to pass on their values to their children.


1. Belong to a kehila [community] with a Rov [rabbi] who can guide you, and live spiritual, meaningful and inspired lives where you are true role models for your children.
2. Create a happy and nurturing home environment; avoid corporal punishment and refrain from sending them to settings where it is condoned.
3. Spend quality time and nurture your relationships with your children and seek help should you find yourself exuding negative energy with them.
4. Be flexible – treat them as individuals and allow them to chart their own course in life.
5. Protect them from abuse and molestation.
6. Live in a forbearing community where the members have good Torah values and guide your children to develop friendships with peers who have good middos [character traits] and share those values.
7. Provide them with a good and broad-based education – in Judaic and general studies.
8. "Stay in the Game" – never give up on them no matter how bumpy the road educationally or socially, and professionally identify and address any learning disabilities.
9. See to it that your values and those of their schools are consistent and maintain congruence between your words and deeds.
10. See that they exercise (very) often and have varied hobbies and interests.
And … always and above all, daven [pray] to Hashem [God] for siyata dishmaya [heavenly assistance].



These are things that apply to any faith. I do not think the fundamental issues of passing Judaism along to children in this country are really that different from parents trying to pass along Christianity or Islam. What is of particular interest to me here is that nowhere on this list does Rabbi Horowitz say anything about belief, sitting down with your kids and convincing them with "powerful" arguments that certain things, like God's existence and the Exodus from Egypt, are True.

This illustrates a basic problem with how our society engages the question of religious belief. Both sides, religious and secular, like to maintain that religion is about belief. Both sides make the pretense of fealty to this myth because each side finds it useful. Religious people would have us believe that they are religious because they believe specific claims while secular people claim, as rational people, to have refuted such claims and moved beyond them. Can we be honest with ourselves that the decision to follow a religion or abandon it has nothing to do with belief? How many people have actually become atheists from reading Spinoza or even Richard Dawkins? Religion is a way of living and a society in which one chooses to live. If you wish to pursue a certain way of life and live in a certain society then you will "believe" in the accessory religion. If not then you will not "believe" and find yourself another way of life, another society, and accept their "beliefs."

Now the issue is muddled by the fact that religious people claim to believe things and secular people claim to not believe certain things and, in a certain surface sense, this is true; most religious people and their secular counterparts, in their own minds, honestly do see themselves respectively as believers and non-believers. The question is what is the basis for such beliefs. To put it simply, most people are social thinkers, not idea thinkers. Abstract ideas such as universal principles of right, wrong, true and false are not real to them and, therefore, have no meaning. What is real and meaningful to most people are relationships; you live in a specific society according to a specific code of conduct. One does not "believe" or "disbelieve" in God; one believes in parents, siblings, friends, Saturday morning Kiddush, or the Sunday church social. There are no "big questions" to be answered; people need to be born, become adults, married, and put in the ground with due ceremony and reverence. Once the decision to "believe" is made, it simply becomes its own reality, true by definition. If it so happens that this reality is challenged then arguments will be mustered in a fixed game of formulating arguments to suit a given conclusion; in essence, drawing targets around the arrows. Since most people do not have a concept of universal principles, they cannot be tied by any notion that arguments have consequences; that accepting an argument means accepting its underlying principles and their potentially undesirable conclusions when applied in other places. (See My Search for Meaning.)


Would it really be so bad if we could be honest and straightforward about things and take belief out of the picture? In the case of Orthodox Judaism, this would mean Judaism as envisioned by Moses Mendelssohn. If you are willing to make an honest effort to keep halakhah (both as to pertains to human beings and to God) you can be part of the Orthodox community. For the sake of practical argument, as with Mendelssohn, I will even throw in a general belief in God and divine providence.

Haveil Havalim #282

Founded by Soccer Dad, Haveil Havalim is a carnival of Jewish blogs -- a weekly collection of Jewish and Israeli blog highlights, tidbits and points of interest collected from blogs all around the world. It's hosted by different bloggers each week and coordinated by Jack. The term "Haveil Havalim," which means "Vanity of Vanities," is from Qoheleth, (Ecclesiastes) which was written by King Solomon. King Solomon built the Holy Temple in Jerusalem and later on got all bogged down in materialism and other "excesses" and realized that it was nothing but "hevel" (or in English, "vanity").








Welcome to the August 29, 2010 edition of Haveil Havalim. For those of you visiting for the first time, Izgad is a wide ranging blog dealing with issues from Judaism, Asperger syndrome, to medieval and early modern history with regular side trips to the world of science fiction and fantasy. The underlying theme behind all of this (beside for me being able talk about whatever interests me) is a desire to transcend the regular dead end debates between left and right, religious and secular, and seek out alternative frameworks. (See Introduction and a Word of Explanation.) With this in mind, as host, I have been somewhat selective in which submissions to accept for this carnival. I rejected pieces that I found to be simple tirades from either the left or right. If there is going to be a link to something on Izgad it should be because there is actually something, whether I agree with it or not, that is the product of some serious thought and adds to the conversation I am trying to have here and to which I invite all of you to take part in.



I would like to begin with the posts that really struck a chord with me personally, not to denigrate the other quality posts.


Elise/ Independent Patriot presents a Guide to the Perplexed for those struggling with raising children on the autism spectrum and talks about her experience with her atheist Asperger son. Posted at Raising Asperger's Kids.


As an Asperger, I was delighted to see a post about Asperger syndrome and Judaism. Elise's discussion of her son reminds me of C. S. Lewis talking about how when he was an atheist he spent a lot of time not believing in God and being angry at him for not existing. This post also talks about The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Hitchhiker, Maimonides and Asperger syndrome, what could be better!




 Rabbi Mordechai Torczyner reflects on the upcoming crop of rabbinical students and on the spiritual demands of blowing the Shofar. Posted at The Rebbetzin's Husband.

I found both pieces particularly touching. The former because, as someone heading toward thirty and who teaches high school and college students, I am beginning to realize that there is a generation gap between my students and me. God help me, I am one of the adults. As for the latter, I am the son of a rabbi, who always blew Shofar, but was never any good at it myself.




Getting Ready for the High Holidays


David Tzohar attempts to understand the inner meaning of Jewish prayer. Posted at Tzohar LaTeiva.


Rachel Barenblat writes about the concept of tikkun ha-sulam, Repairing the ladder, and its connection to the month of Elul. Posted at Velveteen Rabbi.


Minnesota Mamaleh gets ready for the High Holidays with the help of her family's new puppy. Posted at TC Jewfolk.


Elianah-Sharon talks about the song "Seasons of Love" from Rent in Things You Need To Know About Me - Jewels of Elul (The Thing That Changed My Life). Posted at Irresistably Me.


This post is not really connected to Judaism, but I love Rent. I cannot resist any story that is tragic, depressive, kills off main characters and has the humanism to transcend it all. My personal favorite song is "One Song Glory."


Rivster presents Thrilling Dissonance about singing the passage from Jeremiah "zacharti loch chesed niuriach," used in the High Holiday services. Posted at Frume Sarah's World.

I also have a thing for this passage. Unfortunately most people forget what comes two verses after it.


Culture

Avital Pinnick, in Henna by Sienna, talks about Noam Sienna and his efforts to preserve Jewish henna traditions. Posted at This and That. 

Harry talks about attending a production of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night in Jerusalem. Posted at Israelity.

Risa writes about her recent trip to Tel Aviv and offers pictures in Tel Aviv - Revisited and the Klezmer Music in The Abuhav Synagogue in Tzfat. Posted at Isramom.




Thought & Practice






Rabbi Josh Yuter responds to R. Broyde's recent post opposing women leading Kabbalat Shabbat. While not disagreeing with R. Broyde's decision as a matter of policy, R. Yuter addresses the question of communal confusion in the decision making process. Posted at YUTOPIA.


Hadassah Sabo Milner presents The Art of Beginning Again – Spiritual Waters | In the Pink about her experiences using the mikvah. Posted at In the Pink.


Chaviva presents Taking the (Hair) Plunge about her decision to start wearing a sheitel. Posted at Just call me Chaviva.


Susan Barnes has a pair of posts on being part of a Jewish burial society, Chevra Kadisha Seminar - The Experience and Chevra Kadisha Seminar - The Knowledge. Posted at To Kiss A Mezuzah.



Food


David Levy presents Roast Chicken Surprise, A Rosh Hashanah Recipe. Not that I recommend that anyone try this at home, but the post is funny. He also has Confessions of a Yom Kippur Slacker: I Never Fast. Posted at JewishBoston.com.




Batya presents f2f With A JBlogger about her recent dining experience. Posted at me-ander.


Mirjam Weiss presents You Say It's Your Birthday. Posted at Miriyummy.



Politics

 SnoopyTheGoon has an essay defending the theory of relativity from the charge that it promotes relativism. Posted at SimplyJews.




That concludes this edition. Submit your blog article to the next edition of Haveil Havalim using our carnival submission form. Past posts and future hosts can be found on our blog carnival index page.


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From Rabbi Marc Angel: Kupat Ha’ir is Religious Charlatanism

Several months ago I posted about Rabbi Marc Angel (one of our last best hopes for sanity in Orthodox Judaism) and his denunciation of the Haredi charity organization Kupat Ha'ir. This week, in his newsletter on the Torah portion, (hat tip to Ms. S.) he is back on the topic, arguing that Kupat Ha'ir is an example of religious charlatanism.


I (like so many others) regularly receive glossy pamphlets from an organization asking us to give charity to their cause. This group must be spending a considerable amount of money to produce these glossy advertisements, filled with pictures of "saintly" looking rabbis and sages. The recent brochure tells us on the front page, in bold letters, that if we contribute to their charity, we are ASSURED of blessings. All contributors to their charity "are assured that they will merit a good, sweet year with no distress or serious ailments." The message is that those "sages" who run this charity have a direct line to God, and can give God exact orders as to who to bless and who not to bless--based, of course, on whether people contribute to this charity.  This type of solicitation of funds is a reflection of charlatanism, a profound degradation of Torah.  It astounds me how anyone would want to lend his name to such a solicitation, or would want to contribute to such a group.

 In this week's Torah portion, we read of blessings and curses--that are dispensed by God, and God alone. No human being has the right to presume that he/she knows and can control the eternal and infinite God. 

 Genuine religion rests on a foundation of humility and a sincere striving to come closer to God. It calls on us to take responsibility for our spiritual lives. Charlatanism rests on a foundation of spiritual arrogance i.e. that some few "sages" can manipulate God and guarantee how God will act. Charlatanism tries to reduce us spiritually, and to make us dependent on an inner clique of wonder workers.


So who is with me? I am very serious. Let the RCA take a break from Rabbi Avi Weiss and excommunicate all those behind Kupat Ha'ir as well as any rabbi who allows their name to be used by them. I do not care how big a Torah scholar they are. Spinoza was an up and coming Torah scholar and that did not save him. Personally I think Kupat Ha'ir is far more dangerous to Judaism than anything Spinoza thought up.