Dr. Daniel Lasker gave a second lecture, while he was in Columbus, comparing Rabbi Judah Halevi to Maimondes. Here are my notes; as always, all mistakes are mine.
There is a trend in academia to make everything applied that one should not just be sitting in an ivory tower. This is difficult for Jewish thought. Perhaps we can create nano Jewish thinkers. The purpose of this lecture is to present two Jewish thinkers and consider how they can be applied.
Judah Halevi was born somewhere in Spain around 1075. He left Spain at an advanced age for Israel. We are not certain if he ever made it. According to the legend he was run over by an Arab horseman. There are lots of problems with this story. We do not hear about it until several centuries later. Also Israel was under Christian rule during this time. Halevi wrote poems, but also a work of philosophy, the Kuzari. This is a fictional account about the conversion of the Khazars, a group of people living around Azerbaijan, who converted around the eight century. Maimonides also was born in Spain. He fled the Almohads and ended up in Fez where he may have lived for a time as a Muslim. He traveled to Israel but was unable to make it there so he moved to Egypt where he worked as a doctor.
In looking at these two models of thought, we tend to see them as opposed to each other. Maimonides was the super-rationalist and Halevi was the anti-rationalist. Setting them up as two separate models is unfair as they both came from similar assumptions. They were both concerned with reconciling religion with philosophy. For Halevi, the religion of Judaism was an empirical truth. If philosophy contradicts it then we require a new philosophy. For Maimonides, philosophy has to agree to the truth of Judaism but not literally. One should reinterpret Judaism in light of philosophy. An example of this is anthropomorphism. Maimonides was successful in changing Judaism to reject the notion that God has a body, regardless of what the Bible says because it is a philosophically untenable position. Maimonides also insisted that Hosea did not literally marry a prostitute, because that would be dishonorable for a prophet. Where one draws the line is open-ended and depends on one’s allegiance to philosophy and the literal text of the Bible.
Why is Judaism a divine religion? According to Halevi, the real proof for Judaism comes from history as opposed to a simple rational religion. R. Abraham Ibn Ezra, in his commentary on the Ten Commandments, notes that Halevi asked him why the Ten Commandments begin with referring to the exodus and not creation. Ibn Ezra gives a different explanation than Halevi. For Halevi Judaism is true because 600,000 men saw the revelation at Sinai. For Maimonides prophecy is a natural process to pick up the divine message which is constantly broadcasted. God does not change; how one receives it depends on the person. God does not choose people to be prophets. Prophets provide a framework for human society. Humans require such a framework because humans vary in their behavior in ways unlike animals. Thus, all law systems ultimately come from God. The laws of the bible are different from the bylaws of Columbus in that the Bible helps one refine the intellect and obtain immortality.
What is the nature of God and how does one come to know God? For Halevi, the God of Abraham is experienced while the God of Aristotle is understood. One might die for the God of Abraham, not the God of Aristotle. One can only love the God of Abraham. For Maimonides, the God of Abraham is the God of Aristotle. The beginning of Maimonides’ Mishnah Torah is a description of God based on Aristotle. Then Maimonides immediately goes to talking about sanctifying God’s name.
Halevi believed that Jews were intrinsically different from gentiles. This is based on the hierarchy of nature. He did this because he needed to explain why only Jews are prophets. Halevi went so far as to argue that even converts cannot be prophets. Maimonides believed that Jews were different because they observed the Torah. This gives them a better ability to understand the divine realm. Halevi saw Jews as having different hardware. For Maimonides, it is a matter of the software.
Today we have this struggle between science and religion. Maimonides teaches that one follows science wherever it leads. Halevi stressed more the actual text even if it has to be taken allegorically. There is also the question of how one argues for religion. Maimonides' attempt to prove Judaism from the content would have a greater chance of success than a simple historical argument. One last thing is Jewish ethnocentricity. Halevi faced dominant Christian and Muslim religion, which argued for their strength. Halevi needed to therefore argue from Jewish weaknesses and Jewish willingness to sacrifice for their faith. Nowadays we are operating from more of a position of strength it may be time to move away from this point of view toward a more Maimonidean view.
Thursday, May 19, 2011
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
Daniel Lasker - The Jewish Critique of Christianity
Here is a lecture that Dr. Daniel Lasker gave at Ohio State last Friday on Jewish polemics against Christianity. He argues that Jews in the Middle Ages were more proactive in crafting anti-Christian polemics and that this genre was not simply a response to Christian polemics. I must admit that I am not yet convinced of his argument. I am mainly interested in what happens in the thirteenth century, the "golden age" of these polemics so to speak, and for this period he fails to make an argument. Here are my notes. As always, all mistakes are mine.
When you are talking about narrative, how do you give a framework to facts? In terms of Jewish writings against Christianity we have the basic facts yet we still have to think about the narrative of this material. There are two sides to this. Christian polemics against Judaism go back to the New Testament itself. The Jewish polemics come much later. The old narrative was that Jews were responding to Christians. If Christians had not initiated there would have been no reason for Jews to write. In Jewish apologetics, Jews are the tolerant ones who believe that the righteous of all faiths have a share in the world to come.
According to Jeremy Cohen, prior to 1170 Jews did not write polemics because Christians were not interested in Jews. Instead Jews held to traditional genres like biblical commentary. At the end of the twelfth century we see Jacob b. Reuben and R. Joseph Kimhi. They were interested merely in protecting Jews, not in going on the offensive.
This narrative is very comfortable to Jews. It makes Jews out to be the tolerant ones who are always the victims. Nineteenth century Jewish historians wrote in an atmosphere that denied Jews writes so they needed to avoid anything that had Jews initiating things. Jacob Katz and Israel Yuval have helped change this model. Katz described Jews as being very comfortable with Christian culture. Yuval wrote about Jews wanting revenge against Christians when the Messiah came. Some of this comes from a discomfort with Jewish power coming from Zionism. If the past two thousand years were not simply Jews being oppressed by gentiles then Jews lose their moral blank check when it comes to dealing with the Palestinians.
In the first nine centuries of Christian history, there are many adversus Judaeos tracts, but nothing in return. At most you get anti-Christian allusions in rabbinic literature. The rise of Islam marked a major shift. Why would Jews in Muslim countries write polemics against Christianity when there was no Christian missionary campaign? There was another upswing in early modern Italy even without an actual missionary campaign. David Berger argues that Christians were actually responding to Jewish challenges. Very few Dominicans, even in the thirteenth century, were actually involved with preaching to Jews. Some of the nastiest Jewish anti-Christian polemics were not in response to Christianity. Jacob b. Reuben told his Christian friend that he would accept Judaism if he had a brain. (Jacob b. Reuben's Wars of the Lord is a response to a Christian friend who tried to convert him.) Later writers like Crescas are actually more sober. We even see earlier works being toned down.
If the old narrative is no longer viable is there an alternative? Now the old narrative was not completely wrong. Jews did react at least somewhat to Christians. In the thirteenth century, even Ashkenazim turned to polemics. Similarly we have the fifteenth century responses to the forced Tortosa debate. Jews attacked Christianity because Christianity took for itself the Jewish birthright. The first authors of polemical treaties were philosopher theologians. These thinkers formulated a theology of the unity of God. Attacking Christianity was simply a logical extension of this. Andalusian Jews carried on this tradition in the eleventh century due to their philosophical interests. They passed this on to Ashkenazic Jews. This is the picture until the end of the twelfth century when the Christian campaigns began. Here the old narrative comes into play. This situation continued through the fifteenth century in Iberia.
When you are talking about narrative, how do you give a framework to facts? In terms of Jewish writings against Christianity we have the basic facts yet we still have to think about the narrative of this material. There are two sides to this. Christian polemics against Judaism go back to the New Testament itself. The Jewish polemics come much later. The old narrative was that Jews were responding to Christians. If Christians had not initiated there would have been no reason for Jews to write. In Jewish apologetics, Jews are the tolerant ones who believe that the righteous of all faiths have a share in the world to come.
According to Jeremy Cohen, prior to 1170 Jews did not write polemics because Christians were not interested in Jews. Instead Jews held to traditional genres like biblical commentary. At the end of the twelfth century we see Jacob b. Reuben and R. Joseph Kimhi. They were interested merely in protecting Jews, not in going on the offensive.
This narrative is very comfortable to Jews. It makes Jews out to be the tolerant ones who are always the victims. Nineteenth century Jewish historians wrote in an atmosphere that denied Jews writes so they needed to avoid anything that had Jews initiating things. Jacob Katz and Israel Yuval have helped change this model. Katz described Jews as being very comfortable with Christian culture. Yuval wrote about Jews wanting revenge against Christians when the Messiah came. Some of this comes from a discomfort with Jewish power coming from Zionism. If the past two thousand years were not simply Jews being oppressed by gentiles then Jews lose their moral blank check when it comes to dealing with the Palestinians.
In the first nine centuries of Christian history, there are many adversus Judaeos tracts, but nothing in return. At most you get anti-Christian allusions in rabbinic literature. The rise of Islam marked a major shift. Why would Jews in Muslim countries write polemics against Christianity when there was no Christian missionary campaign? There was another upswing in early modern Italy even without an actual missionary campaign. David Berger argues that Christians were actually responding to Jewish challenges. Very few Dominicans, even in the thirteenth century, were actually involved with preaching to Jews. Some of the nastiest Jewish anti-Christian polemics were not in response to Christianity. Jacob b. Reuben told his Christian friend that he would accept Judaism if he had a brain. (Jacob b. Reuben's Wars of the Lord is a response to a Christian friend who tried to convert him.) Later writers like Crescas are actually more sober. We even see earlier works being toned down.
If the old narrative is no longer viable is there an alternative? Now the old narrative was not completely wrong. Jews did react at least somewhat to Christians. In the thirteenth century, even Ashkenazim turned to polemics. Similarly we have the fifteenth century responses to the forced Tortosa debate. Jews attacked Christianity because Christianity took for itself the Jewish birthright. The first authors of polemical treaties were philosopher theologians. These thinkers formulated a theology of the unity of God. Attacking Christianity was simply a logical extension of this. Andalusian Jews carried on this tradition in the eleventh century due to their philosophical interests. They passed this on to Ashkenazic Jews. This is the picture until the end of the twelfth century when the Christian campaigns began. Here the old narrative comes into play. This situation continued through the fifteenth century in Iberia.
Monday, May 16, 2011
Victor David Hanson on Western Military Dynamism
This past Thursday The Ohio State University hosted Victor David Hanson who spoke on “Western Military Dynamism and its Antidotes.” Hanson, in addition to being a conservative commentator, is one of the leading classicists of this generation. His presentation was a bit of both. I must admit that some of his comments made me uncomfortable and I suspect that I was one of the more conservative people in attendance. While I am willing to use the terms "West" and "East" for convenience, I think there is someone rather arbitrary about them and do not see them as reflecting hard reality. Here are my notes from the lecture; I am curious as to the thoughts of my readers. As usual all mistakes are mine.
This talk is about the “western way of war.” When the term was first used twenty-five years ago it brought numerous objections. Today it seems there is a problem with even using the term the "West." Until 1950, it simply was a geographic term. The Romans used it in an expansive sense. It was enriched through the adoption of Judeo-Christian values, the Renaissance and the spread of Colonialism. After 1950 the West became a state of mind. Japan and South Korea are Western in ways that Egypt is not. A Western can be of any race but has an allegiance to constitutional government, freedom of the press and religion. The claim is not that one can draw a straight line between ancient Athens and the present. There were detours like the Inquisition.
Jared Diamond argues that there are no values just geographic determinants. He argues that the Greeks and Romans had a head start and even today Europe has an advantage. Hegel and Schopenhauer believed that there was a West but that the Romans were contaminated by other cultures. It was only in Germany that Western values were maintained.
There something intrinsic to this notion of the West; it is something cultural, but its relevancy extends even to military matters. From the Greeks onward, when these larger protocols were applied to battle, we begin to see a paradigm of superior technology. This is not merely finding a technology; gun powder, triremes, and stirrups were invented outside the West. The key issue is figuring out how to best use it. After the battle of Lepanto in 1571, many of the best Ottoman galleys were taken from the West. The Ottomans stormed Constantinople in 1453 with guns manufactured in Germany. In contrast, Hernan Cortez was able to make gunpowder out of ingredients he found in Mexico and even forge cannons. The Aztecs had access to this same material but were unable to make any use of it.
The West has been able to find a way to employ capitalism. Natives flocked to Cortez to sell him the necessary supplies. The U.S. coalition in 1991 had more bottled water than the Iraqis. Instead of defining bravery in terms of personal kills (Homeric values), starting from the Greeks Western countries defined bravery in terms of units. An extension of this demotion of individual military heroes is the ability to remove generals. Gen. Douglas MacArthur was sacked during the Korean War. All the leading generals in ancient Greece were at one point audited or even sacked by their home city.
(This does not apply to the medieval warfare, which focusd on individual knights. I guess Hanson views the Middle ages as a "detour" in western history. While I agree that there is something important to this notion of a military tradition of an "esprit de corps", it contradicts the notion of Western "individualism." If the West values the individual then how did it come to take a more collective view when it came to the military? No matter how one answers this question, one would have to give up either individualism or military collectivism as "western" values.)
Other systems needed to find ways to counter the West. This was often done by turning to asymmetrical warfare, where you change the ground on which you are fighting. The West seems less able to take casualties. We can see this in the ancient battles of Salamis in 480 BCE and Gaugamela in 331 BCE to the modern-day war in Iraq. Another check is parasitism where one uses lethal weapons which one did not have to invest as a culture. This goes for Native Americans or Zulus with guns to Iraqi insurgents being able to nullify an Abrams tank. One does not have to understand the ballistics behind these weapons or even how to repair them. One can just fire these weapons until they break down. A third check is the ability to challenge the notion of a monolithic West. In truth, there is no monolithic anything. It is certainly hard to unite western cultures. You can resist a western power with the help of another western power. Persia was willing to interfere with Greek city-states. More French and British soldiers died in Verdun and Somme than in ninety years of colonialism. Americans lost more soldiers in the final year of the Civil War than they ever lost in conflicts with Native Americans. Finally, opponents of the West have been able to rely on the empathy of some in the West. Long before Michael Moore compared the Iraqi insurgents to the minutemen and said that Bin Laden should have attacked a red state, you had Lysistrata and Euripides’ Trojan Women, which was a damning portrayal of the Greeks.
War is the same, regardless of the technology. Modern war is change speeded up. The issues remain the same. Why is this true? One turns to Thucydides, that the nature of man is the same. We are in a situation in which those who oppose the West do not wish to counter us on the battlefield. We are discovering ways to check those who wish to check us even as we desire to fight a more conventional war. Where does this lead us? There are certain disciplines that are invaluable in times when others are losing their sanity in this speeded up world. If you want to understand why people want to kill there is no better discipline than history.
This talk is about the “western way of war.” When the term was first used twenty-five years ago it brought numerous objections. Today it seems there is a problem with even using the term the "West." Until 1950, it simply was a geographic term. The Romans used it in an expansive sense. It was enriched through the adoption of Judeo-Christian values, the Renaissance and the spread of Colonialism. After 1950 the West became a state of mind. Japan and South Korea are Western in ways that Egypt is not. A Western can be of any race but has an allegiance to constitutional government, freedom of the press and religion. The claim is not that one can draw a straight line between ancient Athens and the present. There were detours like the Inquisition.
Jared Diamond argues that there are no values just geographic determinants. He argues that the Greeks and Romans had a head start and even today Europe has an advantage. Hegel and Schopenhauer believed that there was a West but that the Romans were contaminated by other cultures. It was only in Germany that Western values were maintained.
There something intrinsic to this notion of the West; it is something cultural, but its relevancy extends even to military matters. From the Greeks onward, when these larger protocols were applied to battle, we begin to see a paradigm of superior technology. This is not merely finding a technology; gun powder, triremes, and stirrups were invented outside the West. The key issue is figuring out how to best use it. After the battle of Lepanto in 1571, many of the best Ottoman galleys were taken from the West. The Ottomans stormed Constantinople in 1453 with guns manufactured in Germany. In contrast, Hernan Cortez was able to make gunpowder out of ingredients he found in Mexico and even forge cannons. The Aztecs had access to this same material but were unable to make any use of it.
The West has been able to find a way to employ capitalism. Natives flocked to Cortez to sell him the necessary supplies. The U.S. coalition in 1991 had more bottled water than the Iraqis. Instead of defining bravery in terms of personal kills (Homeric values), starting from the Greeks Western countries defined bravery in terms of units. An extension of this demotion of individual military heroes is the ability to remove generals. Gen. Douglas MacArthur was sacked during the Korean War. All the leading generals in ancient Greece were at one point audited or even sacked by their home city.
(This does not apply to the medieval warfare, which focusd on individual knights. I guess Hanson views the Middle ages as a "detour" in western history. While I agree that there is something important to this notion of a military tradition of an "esprit de corps", it contradicts the notion of Western "individualism." If the West values the individual then how did it come to take a more collective view when it came to the military? No matter how one answers this question, one would have to give up either individualism or military collectivism as "western" values.)
Other systems needed to find ways to counter the West. This was often done by turning to asymmetrical warfare, where you change the ground on which you are fighting. The West seems less able to take casualties. We can see this in the ancient battles of Salamis in 480 BCE and Gaugamela in 331 BCE to the modern-day war in Iraq. Another check is parasitism where one uses lethal weapons which one did not have to invest as a culture. This goes for Native Americans or Zulus with guns to Iraqi insurgents being able to nullify an Abrams tank. One does not have to understand the ballistics behind these weapons or even how to repair them. One can just fire these weapons until they break down. A third check is the ability to challenge the notion of a monolithic West. In truth, there is no monolithic anything. It is certainly hard to unite western cultures. You can resist a western power with the help of another western power. Persia was willing to interfere with Greek city-states. More French and British soldiers died in Verdun and Somme than in ninety years of colonialism. Americans lost more soldiers in the final year of the Civil War than they ever lost in conflicts with Native Americans. Finally, opponents of the West have been able to rely on the empathy of some in the West. Long before Michael Moore compared the Iraqi insurgents to the minutemen and said that Bin Laden should have attacked a red state, you had Lysistrata and Euripides’ Trojan Women, which was a damning portrayal of the Greeks.
War is the same, regardless of the technology. Modern war is change speeded up. The issues remain the same. Why is this true? One turns to Thucydides, that the nature of man is the same. We are in a situation in which those who oppose the West do not wish to counter us on the battlefield. We are discovering ways to check those who wish to check us even as we desire to fight a more conventional war. Where does this lead us? There are certain disciplines that are invaluable in times when others are losing their sanity in this speeded up world. If you want to understand why people want to kill there is no better discipline than history.
Have a Heart (or at Least a Funnybone) for Organ Donation
A former student of mine helped put this short video together for the Halachic Organ Donation Society, which urges Orthodox Jews to agree to donate their organs.
Sunday, May 15, 2011
Rishona Campbell on My Grandfather
My friend Rishona Campbell finally completed her Orthodox Jewish conversion. This took her a number of years. I amazed at her patience at the amount of junk she put up with, putting her life on hold for several years. I wish her best of luck as a Jew. Her post on her conversion story is password attached, but she was kind enough to let me put up her statements about my grandfather, Rabbi Yitzchak (Irvin) Chinn of blessed memory. (See "Eulogy for My Grandfather.")
In January, 2008 I came across an old newspaper in my Grandparents' home. I was from right before Christmas and it had a picture of Rabbi Irvin Chinn, z'tl, donating blood. It wasn't a news story or article. There was just a simple caption that McKeesport Hospital was having a blood drive and here is the rabbi from Gemilas Chesed giving blood (so you should too). It was noteworthy to me because for sure, Rabbi Chinn looked like a frum man. However the congregation was in White Oak...and area that was adjacent to my high school, so I knew it. And it wasn't very Jewish to my knowledge. But I kept the name in mind...in the back of my head.
...
Well my first visit to Gemilas Chesed was in July of 2008. Rabbi Chinn was nifter (deceased) the previous Purim. While I never met him, I met his progeny. No, not his natural children, they didn't live in the community (although I did eventually meet them through visits)...but his kehilla. A kehilla that he led for 50 years; who he taught to treat everyone (Jew and non-Jew) with kindness and greet them with a smile. He showed countless people the beauty of Torah observance and those people were eager to pass that on (no doubt in part to how admirable Rabbi Chinn was in how he led a Torah observant life). In spite of my personal struggle and shortcomings, how could I ever sit back and declare that there is no such thing as G-d (chas v'shalom) and that he has no involvement in our lives? Looking back, rarely did I understand what was happening to me or why certain things happened. I still don't understand...but I can see the amazing handiwork of a divine plan (in there somewhere).
In January, 2008 I came across an old newspaper in my Grandparents' home. I was from right before Christmas and it had a picture of Rabbi Irvin Chinn, z'tl, donating blood. It wasn't a news story or article. There was just a simple caption that McKeesport Hospital was having a blood drive and here is the rabbi from Gemilas Chesed giving blood (so you should too). It was noteworthy to me because for sure, Rabbi Chinn looked like a frum man. However the congregation was in White Oak...and area that was adjacent to my high school, so I knew it. And it wasn't very Jewish to my knowledge. But I kept the name in mind...in the back of my head.
...
Well my first visit to Gemilas Chesed was in July of 2008. Rabbi Chinn was nifter (deceased) the previous Purim. While I never met him, I met his progeny. No, not his natural children, they didn't live in the community (although I did eventually meet them through visits)...but his kehilla. A kehilla that he led for 50 years; who he taught to treat everyone (Jew and non-Jew) with kindness and greet them with a smile. He showed countless people the beauty of Torah observance and those people were eager to pass that on (no doubt in part to how admirable Rabbi Chinn was in how he led a Torah observant life). In spite of my personal struggle and shortcomings, how could I ever sit back and declare that there is no such thing as G-d (chas v'shalom) and that he has no involvement in our lives? Looking back, rarely did I understand what was happening to me or why certain things happened. I still don't understand...but I can see the amazing handiwork of a divine plan (in there somewhere).
Friday, May 13, 2011
Nazis in Space
Here is a trailer for a movie coming out next year called Iron Sky. I suspect that many of my readers will be offended, but to me this movie looks like pure genius. (Needless to say I have been let down by horrible movies with awesome trailers before.)
So, with Nazis in space, I think there is only one thing that can save humanity, Jews in Space.
So, with Nazis in space, I think there is only one thing that can save humanity, Jews in Space.
Wednesday, May 11, 2011
Seeing the Big Picture
I remember seeing False Messiah’s post on the doctored photograph in Der Tzitung, a Yiddish newspaper, removing Secretary of State Hillary Clinton a week ago and not thinking twice about it; this is the sort of thing I expect from a Haredi paper. Amusing and worth a chuckle at yes; making a big deal about it no. So it was to my surprise that the story exploded from the Jewish blogosphere into the mainstream news, finding its way to the Huffington Post. Clarissa went on a tear on the subject.
I don't want to hear anybody come here to screech about the so-called religious sensibilities of the nasty freakazoids who insulted women in this way. If they find the photo hurtful to their fanatical feelings, they could have avoided publishing it altogether. However, in our Western Civilization women now play an important role in all areas of existence. It is extremely insulting to have our reality that we worked hard to create being manipulated in this way to satisfy a bunch of miserable woman-haters.
Even my non-Jewish friend, whose desk is across from mine in the office, asked me about the photo. So I will throw in my own two cents on the matter, particularly as I think the wrong lesson is being learned. The focus of the story has been about women; was this disrespectful to women to censure out the most powerful woman in the country from what will likely be a historic photograph? I see this as a story of bureaucracy following its own particular kind of logic down the path into absurdity.
The feature of the bureaucratic mind on display in this story is the top-down attempt to establish a specific set of rules to cover a wide variety of people and situations. Particular emphasis is placed on satisfying those who are loudest and most extreme; the sort of people likely to take action over even, what may seem to others as, minor issues. If the proposed solution may seem to some as surrender to blackmail, without a doubt the solution will display an elegant pragmatism to lull reasonable men with the siren call of “let us get along.” For it is a reasonable man who most desires to get along with others. This leads to the empowerment of extremists along all fronts as they see they can blackmail the system and get away with it. Another problem comes when, due to the law of unforeseen consequences, a situation arises that the bureaucrat failed to see. Of course, the bureaucratic mind still follows its procedures, leading to disaster or if we are fortunate just absurdity. This applies to all bureaucracies, religious or otherwise.
People have all sorts of ideas about what sorts of things are appropriate to be shown in public and should be considered “obscene.” This is a difficult arena of human activity to set rules for because there is little to no logic as to what positions people take; it is just a reality that people have lines. (To anyone who thinks they are exempt, I suggest they consider what their reaction would be to pictures of little girls being raped and murdered.) For better or worse and for various historical and cultural reasons, people’s ideas about obscenity tend to focus on women and the amount of clothing they are wearing. Even the mainstream media does not show women topless, a situation that often leads to absurdity. (See "Defending the King's F-Word Speech.") Even feminists take moral positions regarding the depiction of women.
A Haredi newspaper has to deal with this same problem of what rules to set about the depiction of women as any other media outlet. To make things more difficult, a Haredi newspaper caters to an audience with a significantly lower tolerance for how women are depicted. The label Haredi, like any group, covers many different kinds of people with different temperaments, some of whom are willing to give more leeway for how women may be depicted and some less. Regardless of their actual numbers, those with a more restrictive view wield more power. They hold the moral high ground as the ones who represent “true Jewish values.” Armed with this moral high ground they are all the more likely to speak out and even boycott the paper.
How does the bureaucratic mind solve this problem and offer something that could satisfy all? Simple, just have no pictures of women. It is not like there are readers who will strongly object to there not being pictures of women. With no pictures of women, the cause of all our problems will be removed and we can all read our Haredi newspaper in peace. That is, of course, until absurdity strikes in the form of a photograph of some of our leading public figures, including Hillary Clinton. Thankfully this time around the bureaucratic logic did not lead to bans that destroy people's lives.
Tuesday, May 10, 2011
Uthman Dey: A Humanitarian Hero for Al Nakba Day
To all of my readers, I wish you a merry Al Nakba day. In honor of Al Nakba day and the founding of the State of Israel I wish to put in a word for Uthman Dey. No, Uthman Dey was not a leading Zionist; he was the Muslim ruler of Tunisia in the early seventeenth century best known in the West as a sponsor of the Barbary corsairs, the sort of practice that today we call state-sponsored terrorism. (To be fair Christians were also guilty of this practice. See my review of Catholic Pirates, Greek Merchants.) I mention Uthman Dey because of his handling of a major humanitarian crisis at the end of his reign. In 1609 Spain expelled its Morisco population. Similar to Jewish Conversos, Moriscos were Muslims who were forced to convert to Christianity at the beginning of the sixteenth century. Because of their concentration in southern Spain, the Moriscos were successful in maintaining themselves as a separate cultural unit and actually waged a number of revolts against Spanish rule until the Spanish simply expelled them. Uthman Dey welcomed these refugees into his kingdom with open arms and integrated these quasi Muslims into Tunisian society. Needless to say many of these Moriscos soon found themselves at work in the piracy business, which gave them the opportunity to get back at Spain. He did not put them in refugee camps for sixty-three years to rally world opinion to the pitiful state of these Moriscos and force Spain to take them back.
What does it tell you if the entire Arab world lacks the humanitarian compassion of a seventeenth century sponsor of piracy?
What does it tell you if the entire Arab world lacks the humanitarian compassion of a seventeenth century sponsor of piracy?
Sunday, May 8, 2011
Religious Narrative: Medieval Catholicism, Communism and Islam
One of the surprises of the modern world has been the continued persistence of organized religion. Despite several centuries of Enlightenment criticism, religion remains a powerful force within society. Certainly, within the United States, the vast majority of the population subscribes at least formally to some religion. I would argue that much of this is the result of the inability of secularism to present overarching narratives. Make whatever criticism you want about religions, they tend to be quite good at formulating narratives that allow people to make sense of their lives and all the various parts of their universe. This is important not just for regular people living their social lives, but for intellectuals and in a sense especially for them; it is the people who live in the realm of ideas who need things to click together in a larger whole.
I will start by giving an example from what may be the most intellectually successful religious narrative in history, medieval Catholicism. Take the view of a Catholic living in say 1491; he benefited from living in a world that made sense in ways that we can hardly relate to. In this medieval world, we have Aristotle to explain the natural world. This Aristotelian universe, with its prime mover and essences and accidents, fits neatly with Church teaching, solving the conflict between faith and reason. This system also has political implications. We are in a hierarchical universe were everything from plants, animals and people up to the planets, angels and God have their place in a natural order. Therefore it is only reasonable that human affairs should mirror this reality with a king, nobles, the Church, peasants, men and women each having their place. How does one explain and give meaning to suffering, whether the threat of Islam, schisms in the Church, war, political chaos or simply having to bury a wife and child? Mankind fell to Original Sin, giving Satan power over the Earth. That being said, there is reason to hope; Christ died for our sins so we can go to heaven. If the world looks like it is falling apart we can still look forward to the imminent coming of the apocalypse and the final judgment.
Say what you want about this medieval Catholicism; call it unscientific, anti-democracy, sexist and anti-Semitic. Yes, over the next few centuries, this worldview was rocked by numerous intellectual, and political shifts so that, even if there are still Catholics today, that particular creature the medieval Catholic is now extinct. All this may be true, but medieval Catholicism was an internally consistent system and fit well into the known facts of the world at that time. I would add that this system also proved quite attractive to Jews, particularly those in Spain. (Here is a dirty little secret about pre-modern Judaism. The majority of people who left did so freely out of a desire to assimilate and not due to force or persecution.)
In the history of modern secularism, there has been only one movement to produce a narrative that could compete with organized religion and that was Communism. Try to look at the world, this time from the perspective of a Russian Jew in 1891. Traditional Judaism does not have much to offer, but to be poor, get killed in a pogrom and wait for the Messiah. Now here is Communism. It may not offer a personal God and an afterlife, but instead, it offers the forces of history to guide us and promise us a better world. Faith versus reason? Science has refuted religion, but Communism is the logical extension of evolution applied to human affairs. How should we order our political and social systems? Communism replaces superstition and religious dogma with scientific rationalism, allowing us to create a just system where everyone is equal. How do you explain and offer meaning to human suffering? The problems of this world are the products by the class oppression by the aristocracy and bourgeois. This, though, simply serves to highlight the iniquities of the present systems and hasten the imminent coming of the people's revolution which will create a paradise on Earth in which everyone will work together for the common good and there will be no prejudice nor anti-Semitism.
Again, one can make all sorts of intellectual arguments against this Communist worldview. Ultimately it was undone by the Soviet Union itself, whose blood-soaked history is a better refutation of Communism than anything else. This should not obscure the power of the Communist narrative in its time. Say what you want about Karl Marx, but he has to be viewed as one of the greatest thinkers of all time simply in terms of his ability to craft a system of thought that allows you to discuss not just politics, but history, art and science as one coherent whole. We in the United States fail to appreciate the Communist appeal largely because it failed to ever gain much traction here, but the Communists nearly did win. Forget about the Cold War. After World War I and in the wake the Russian Revolution Communists, without question, had both the intellectual and moral high ground. With that, they nearly took the entire European continent without a single shot being fired. As for Jews, they walked away from traditional Judaism in mass to follow this Communist dream. (See Clarissa for a further discussion about the religious dimensions of Communism.)
Where does this leave our modern world? Try seeing things from the view of an Arab in 1991. Communism, which was a tremendous secularizing force in the Arab, has come crashing down with the fall of the Soviet Union so now what? Well, there is Islam, not the watered down variety, but a "purified" form from its original source in Saudi Arabia. What is wrong with the world and how do we fix it? The West has dominated us politically, first through direct imperialism and later through the dictators they support and corrupted us culturally through secularism. Only Islam can unite the Arab peoples so they can take back what is rightfully theirs. As for science, we Arabs invented science before it was stolen from us by the West.
This narrative may lack the comprehensive elegance of either medieval Catholicism or nineteenth century Communism but, for those with no better narrative options, this will likely do. I cannot say that fundamentalist Islam will likely prove a spiritual threat to Judaism but, as a physical threat, it certainly is a match to either of the other narratives.
I will start by giving an example from what may be the most intellectually successful religious narrative in history, medieval Catholicism. Take the view of a Catholic living in say 1491; he benefited from living in a world that made sense in ways that we can hardly relate to. In this medieval world, we have Aristotle to explain the natural world. This Aristotelian universe, with its prime mover and essences and accidents, fits neatly with Church teaching, solving the conflict between faith and reason. This system also has political implications. We are in a hierarchical universe were everything from plants, animals and people up to the planets, angels and God have their place in a natural order. Therefore it is only reasonable that human affairs should mirror this reality with a king, nobles, the Church, peasants, men and women each having their place. How does one explain and give meaning to suffering, whether the threat of Islam, schisms in the Church, war, political chaos or simply having to bury a wife and child? Mankind fell to Original Sin, giving Satan power over the Earth. That being said, there is reason to hope; Christ died for our sins so we can go to heaven. If the world looks like it is falling apart we can still look forward to the imminent coming of the apocalypse and the final judgment.
Say what you want about this medieval Catholicism; call it unscientific, anti-democracy, sexist and anti-Semitic. Yes, over the next few centuries, this worldview was rocked by numerous intellectual, and political shifts so that, even if there are still Catholics today, that particular creature the medieval Catholic is now extinct. All this may be true, but medieval Catholicism was an internally consistent system and fit well into the known facts of the world at that time. I would add that this system also proved quite attractive to Jews, particularly those in Spain. (Here is a dirty little secret about pre-modern Judaism. The majority of people who left did so freely out of a desire to assimilate and not due to force or persecution.)
In the history of modern secularism, there has been only one movement to produce a narrative that could compete with organized religion and that was Communism. Try to look at the world, this time from the perspective of a Russian Jew in 1891. Traditional Judaism does not have much to offer, but to be poor, get killed in a pogrom and wait for the Messiah. Now here is Communism. It may not offer a personal God and an afterlife, but instead, it offers the forces of history to guide us and promise us a better world. Faith versus reason? Science has refuted religion, but Communism is the logical extension of evolution applied to human affairs. How should we order our political and social systems? Communism replaces superstition and religious dogma with scientific rationalism, allowing us to create a just system where everyone is equal. How do you explain and offer meaning to human suffering? The problems of this world are the products by the class oppression by the aristocracy and bourgeois. This, though, simply serves to highlight the iniquities of the present systems and hasten the imminent coming of the people's revolution which will create a paradise on Earth in which everyone will work together for the common good and there will be no prejudice nor anti-Semitism.
Again, one can make all sorts of intellectual arguments against this Communist worldview. Ultimately it was undone by the Soviet Union itself, whose blood-soaked history is a better refutation of Communism than anything else. This should not obscure the power of the Communist narrative in its time. Say what you want about Karl Marx, but he has to be viewed as one of the greatest thinkers of all time simply in terms of his ability to craft a system of thought that allows you to discuss not just politics, but history, art and science as one coherent whole. We in the United States fail to appreciate the Communist appeal largely because it failed to ever gain much traction here, but the Communists nearly did win. Forget about the Cold War. After World War I and in the wake the Russian Revolution Communists, without question, had both the intellectual and moral high ground. With that, they nearly took the entire European continent without a single shot being fired. As for Jews, they walked away from traditional Judaism in mass to follow this Communist dream. (See Clarissa for a further discussion about the religious dimensions of Communism.)
Where does this leave our modern world? Try seeing things from the view of an Arab in 1991. Communism, which was a tremendous secularizing force in the Arab, has come crashing down with the fall of the Soviet Union so now what? Well, there is Islam, not the watered down variety, but a "purified" form from its original source in Saudi Arabia. What is wrong with the world and how do we fix it? The West has dominated us politically, first through direct imperialism and later through the dictators they support and corrupted us culturally through secularism. Only Islam can unite the Arab peoples so they can take back what is rightfully theirs. As for science, we Arabs invented science before it was stolen from us by the West.
This narrative may lack the comprehensive elegance of either medieval Catholicism or nineteenth century Communism but, for those with no better narrative options, this will likely do. I cannot say that fundamentalist Islam will likely prove a spiritual threat to Judaism but, as a physical threat, it certainly is a match to either of the other narratives.
Thursday, May 5, 2011
Hayek Vs. Keynes
So here we have a remarkably intelligent presentation of the economic debate between Friedrich Hayek and John Maynard Keynes as a rap song and a boxing match. Hayek is assisted by Ludwig van Mises, Keynes by Thomas Malthus. I must admit I am not sure how Malthus fits with Keynes. I would think of Malthus more as being with Hayek in terms of being against government spending on welfare programs. I guess the connection to Keynes is that they both saw man in animalistic terms, motivated by the passions, instead of Hayek's rational producer and consumer.
Wednesday, May 4, 2011
Farewell Osama Bin Ladin, Nice Knowing You
As I am sure by now my readers are aware American, forces have stormed Osama bin Laden's "evil fortress of doom," which, it turns out, was not some cave but an urban compound. I was hoping for bin Laden to go down with a pair of Gatling guns Wolfenstein boss style. It is only fair that the closest thing to a comic book villain this country has had since at least the Cold War should agree to give us the full comic book villain ending.
In thinking back on bin Laden in the shadow of the jubilant celebrations going on around the country I find that I do not hate him nor does the prospect of him being tortured by his promised seventy "Virginians" hold much appeal. Bin Laden was an enemy true, but he was a political enemy and hate, like any other emotion, has no place in politics. This is something both the Left and the Right fail to understood that their rush to bring morality into politics only serves to defeat their own desired ends.
If Bin Laden really was a monster, a being who either lacked reason or simply chose to act from malice, then there could never have been a chance for peace. How could one ever hope to negotiate with such a creature? Thus we would be left with no other option, but unrelenting Hobbesian war to the death with all moral considerations left to the wayside.
I like to believe that people, even Bin Laden, are rational and can be negotiated with. Bin Laden desired for the world to run a certain way, as a global Islamic theocracy. I do not judge him for that; I grant every man the right to want. Now it happens to be that the United States government also wanted things, such as global liberal democracy and capitalism, which conflicted with the desires of Bin Laden. Again there is nothing inherently wrong with this. It is inevitable that human beings, with their different wants, will come into conflict with each other. Now there are two ways to deal with conflict, negotiation or coercive violence. Rational beings have the advantage of being able to choose the former, unlike animals, which are limited to the latter. Bin Laden, through the act of 9/11, chose violence. An act that was surely not in my self-interest, but I am not saying that he was wrong for doing so; I never had any reason to expect Bin Laden to take my self-interest into consideration. For this reason, up until the day we killed him, I would have been open to negotiating some a peace agreement with bin Laden. He would not have even needed to apologize for 9/11; all he would have needed to do was offer me an agreement that gave me a more preferable set of options than war, backed by a rational reason for me to believe that he would actually keep such an agreement.
Let every man believe as he wishes as long as he accepts the full logical consequences of those beliefs. Bin Laden believed that it was in his rational self-interest to pursue war with the United States without keeping to the traditional rules of warfare such as only States wage war and war is to be limited to military personnel. So be it, but in turn that means that we will have no choice but to reply in kind, waging pure unrelenting Hobbesian warfare against him, his supporters or even anyone we might scare enough into waging against him for us.
Should we have responded to 9/11 by nuking Afghanistan, killing millions of innocent civilian Muslims, or even taking out the capitols of every Muslim country? If it would have made this country safer then yes. Considering that, as long as we are considered rational enough to be negotiated with in the future, such extreme actions would make anyone in the future think twice about attacking this country; it is not obvious to me that the mass killing of even innocent civilians would have been the wrong decision. What would the Muslim world look like if Muslims on the street believed that the actions of people like bin Laden would lead to the deaths of them and their families? Whether or not bin Laden was rational and desired to live, I respect Islam enough to believe that the more than a billion ordinary Muslims are rational and do want to live.
I do not hold it against bin Laden for attacking us. Of course, since I do not see anything intrinsically wrong with such behavior, I have no objections to behaving just like him. I believe in rational people working out their differences. In support of that goal, I am willing to be the worst monster in history; the sort of person that no rational being would ever seek to fight.
In thinking back on bin Laden in the shadow of the jubilant celebrations going on around the country I find that I do not hate him nor does the prospect of him being tortured by his promised seventy "Virginians" hold much appeal. Bin Laden was an enemy true, but he was a political enemy and hate, like any other emotion, has no place in politics. This is something both the Left and the Right fail to understood that their rush to bring morality into politics only serves to defeat their own desired ends.
If Bin Laden really was a monster, a being who either lacked reason or simply chose to act from malice, then there could never have been a chance for peace. How could one ever hope to negotiate with such a creature? Thus we would be left with no other option, but unrelenting Hobbesian war to the death with all moral considerations left to the wayside.
I like to believe that people, even Bin Laden, are rational and can be negotiated with. Bin Laden desired for the world to run a certain way, as a global Islamic theocracy. I do not judge him for that; I grant every man the right to want. Now it happens to be that the United States government also wanted things, such as global liberal democracy and capitalism, which conflicted with the desires of Bin Laden. Again there is nothing inherently wrong with this. It is inevitable that human beings, with their different wants, will come into conflict with each other. Now there are two ways to deal with conflict, negotiation or coercive violence. Rational beings have the advantage of being able to choose the former, unlike animals, which are limited to the latter. Bin Laden, through the act of 9/11, chose violence. An act that was surely not in my self-interest, but I am not saying that he was wrong for doing so; I never had any reason to expect Bin Laden to take my self-interest into consideration. For this reason, up until the day we killed him, I would have been open to negotiating some a peace agreement with bin Laden. He would not have even needed to apologize for 9/11; all he would have needed to do was offer me an agreement that gave me a more preferable set of options than war, backed by a rational reason for me to believe that he would actually keep such an agreement.
Let every man believe as he wishes as long as he accepts the full logical consequences of those beliefs. Bin Laden believed that it was in his rational self-interest to pursue war with the United States without keeping to the traditional rules of warfare such as only States wage war and war is to be limited to military personnel. So be it, but in turn that means that we will have no choice but to reply in kind, waging pure unrelenting Hobbesian warfare against him, his supporters or even anyone we might scare enough into waging against him for us.
Should we have responded to 9/11 by nuking Afghanistan, killing millions of innocent civilian Muslims, or even taking out the capitols of every Muslim country? If it would have made this country safer then yes. Considering that, as long as we are considered rational enough to be negotiated with in the future, such extreme actions would make anyone in the future think twice about attacking this country; it is not obvious to me that the mass killing of even innocent civilians would have been the wrong decision. What would the Muslim world look like if Muslims on the street believed that the actions of people like bin Laden would lead to the deaths of them and their families? Whether or not bin Laden was rational and desired to live, I respect Islam enough to believe that the more than a billion ordinary Muslims are rational and do want to live.
I do not hold it against bin Laden for attacking us. Of course, since I do not see anything intrinsically wrong with such behavior, I have no objections to behaving just like him. I believe in rational people working out their differences. In support of that goal, I am willing to be the worst monster in history; the sort of person that no rational being would ever seek to fight.
Friday, April 29, 2011
At the Calvin College Symposium on Religion and Politics
I am writing to all my readers from Grand Rapids MI (my first overnight stay in the "State up North") where I am attending a symposium on religion and politics hosted by Calvin College's Paul B. Henry Institute. So to get some random thoughts in before Shabbos:
I got a ride up to the conference with another Ohio State student. I can't think of many other times where I talked to someone for nearly five hours straight, the entire car trip. He played Carl Reiner to my libertarian historian Mel Brooks. This was the perfect sort of conversation for me. I got to talk about the things that interest me such as the historical method and libertarianism and challenged by an intelligent person who disagrees with me and asks good questions leading to a conversation that I had not previously worked through every move for both sides in my head. Not that I mind questioning other people. The only problem is that I tend to turn more inquisitorial than most people would like. Not that it is personal; on the contrary, I do not care about people's lives, but only their views of life and whether they are coherent and consistent. Though failure to do so is something I take personally.
I gave a presentation this morning of a draft of my dissertation chapter on Joachim of Fiore and Isaac Abarbanel. Where else but a Protestant institution should a Jew go to talk about Catholics (as well as Jews)? I was the odd man out in my discussion panel in that I was not talking about Thomas Hobbes. (Who could resist at an institution named Calvin?) In general, this has been a very political science conference so it was probably the perfect place to announce to political science people that the study of political history is a political act in that it makes politics relevant and so historians like me are needed to make their academic lives meaningful. Then again perhaps my work will convince some of these political science people to not despair that even though the apocalypse might come, ushering in the end of earthly politics, their studies might still yet not have been in vain.
At one of the sessions, there were two presentations that were open Christian apologetics. The first argued against non-theistic understandings of the moral imperative to obey authority figures. The second was a defense of Jonathan Edwards' understanding of Original Sin. Edwards argued that if every being was born independently and untainted by Original Sin then every person would be the equivalent of the prelapsarian Adam. Adam as an innocent being in total communion with God was incapable of having any knowledge of sin and evil. Because of this he could not identify evil and resist it. This leads to a cosmology of consistent decay where every person falls from grace when confronted with sin just like Adam. In the Edwardian cosmology, everyone is corrupt from the beginning, but we can then take a more upwards view of things as people at least try to improve themselves.
This was my first conference hosted by a religious institution so maybe it should have been expected. As a historian, though, I take for granted the fact that my job is to describe "who," "what," "when," "where" and "why," but not "should." I write about messianism, but there is nothing in what I do that can suggest one way or another whether a messiah might be coming or when. My Carl Reiner friend pointed out that coming from a political science perspective there may not be such a simple bifurcation. That is an interesting point; does political science force one out of the neutrality of mere description and into actual advocacy?
Have a good Shabbos everyone.
I got a ride up to the conference with another Ohio State student. I can't think of many other times where I talked to someone for nearly five hours straight, the entire car trip. He played Carl Reiner to my libertarian historian Mel Brooks. This was the perfect sort of conversation for me. I got to talk about the things that interest me such as the historical method and libertarianism and challenged by an intelligent person who disagrees with me and asks good questions leading to a conversation that I had not previously worked through every move for both sides in my head. Not that I mind questioning other people. The only problem is that I tend to turn more inquisitorial than most people would like. Not that it is personal; on the contrary, I do not care about people's lives, but only their views of life and whether they are coherent and consistent. Though failure to do so is something I take personally.
I gave a presentation this morning of a draft of my dissertation chapter on Joachim of Fiore and Isaac Abarbanel. Where else but a Protestant institution should a Jew go to talk about Catholics (as well as Jews)? I was the odd man out in my discussion panel in that I was not talking about Thomas Hobbes. (Who could resist at an institution named Calvin?) In general, this has been a very political science conference so it was probably the perfect place to announce to political science people that the study of political history is a political act in that it makes politics relevant and so historians like me are needed to make their academic lives meaningful. Then again perhaps my work will convince some of these political science people to not despair that even though the apocalypse might come, ushering in the end of earthly politics, their studies might still yet not have been in vain.
At one of the sessions, there were two presentations that were open Christian apologetics. The first argued against non-theistic understandings of the moral imperative to obey authority figures. The second was a defense of Jonathan Edwards' understanding of Original Sin. Edwards argued that if every being was born independently and untainted by Original Sin then every person would be the equivalent of the prelapsarian Adam. Adam as an innocent being in total communion with God was incapable of having any knowledge of sin and evil. Because of this he could not identify evil and resist it. This leads to a cosmology of consistent decay where every person falls from grace when confronted with sin just like Adam. In the Edwardian cosmology, everyone is corrupt from the beginning, but we can then take a more upwards view of things as people at least try to improve themselves.
This was my first conference hosted by a religious institution so maybe it should have been expected. As a historian, though, I take for granted the fact that my job is to describe "who," "what," "when," "where" and "why," but not "should." I write about messianism, but there is nothing in what I do that can suggest one way or another whether a messiah might be coming or when. My Carl Reiner friend pointed out that coming from a political science perspective there may not be such a simple bifurcation. That is an interesting point; does political science force one out of the neutrality of mere description and into actual advocacy?
Have a good Shabbos everyone.
Thursday, April 28, 2011
History 111: How to Start Your Own Religion (Part II)
(Part I)
Having decided to begin my long and difficult task of telling over my divine revelation to the world from the comfort of a Starbucks, I must first recruit for myself followers. Such a task requires a charismatic personality. You see, most graduate students would not be cut out for being the Messiah as they are unable to keep the attention of a crowd of undergraduates even when backed by the force of course requirements and grades. How can they expect to hold the attention of people walking across the campus oval with just threats of hellfire?
Now one might think that the best place for the Messiah to go, in order to spread his message, is to established houses of worship, doing a weekend run of mosques on Fridays, synagogues on Saturdays and churches on Sundays. One assumes that these houses of worship are filled with people who believe in God and desire to hear God's message for them. The problem with this strategy is that such people can be presumed to be satisfied with their religion and are unlikely to be looking to exchange theirs for a new model.
It is the practice of Jewish Alcoholics, Chemically Dependents and Significant Others (JACS), a support group for Jews struggling with addiction, to offer, during their weekend gatherings, in addition to the variety of different denominational services, a session titled "Why I am not in synagogue." Rabbis attending these gatherings are often advised to attend those sessions because it gives them a chance to hear from the very people they would not normally hear from, those not in synagogue.
What is good advice for rabbis is also good for the Messiah. I need to find and reach out precisely to the people who might want to attend an establishment religious service but are not made welcome because they are not "respectable." They might be addicts, prostitutes, homosexuals, just plain liberal, or simply too poor to afford special clothing for weekly services.
To reach out to such people requires a message that vindicates them as outsiders. "Listen up all you people not in services, God sees into your hearts and hears your prayers. Do you think God can be worshipped in gilded churches built on stolen money, with hands dripping the blood of the innocent? God knows that, unlike all those people who pretend to believe in him and haughtily call out to him, it is among you, the dispossessed, that he is truly loved. God has therefore sent you, the true believers, Rev. BZ Messiah to receive his message."
Having vindicated these outsiders, it is important to offer them hope of a future world order in which the establishment will be overturned and your followers will assume their rightful places, which they have been wrongfully usurped from them in this world. "Behold days are coming, says the Lord, when I shall shatter the idols on all foreign-built cars. Those who awaken late to sip their non-Starbucks fair-trade coffee shall find that the whipped cream has run out. The barren ones who mourn for not being able to get married shall dance through the street."
As part of my war against the establishment, it is only reasonable that I denounce the government, which is a bastion of the established religions and refuses to grant me tax-exempt status. Thus Rev. BZ Messiah says: "God damn America, the nipple-ring of Satan's wardrobe malfunction, for it has robbed the Lord's house to fund its dominion over the Earth."
As the Messiah and only bringer of God's message to Earth, it is only natural that I assume a prominent role in my religion way above that of other religious leaders. I will tell my followers where to live and whom to marry and, the moment that any of them dare to challenge a single whim of mine, I will cast them out. Some outsiders might object and call me a cult leader, but they are missing the point; it is all about me. I am the entire religion so it is only logical that the religion moves and breathes in tune with my every personal quirk. Of course, these outsiders are irrelevant; they are too much part of the establishment to ever consider joining my religion anyway. All I care about is my small band of dedicated followers and making sure they are willing to die for me (or at least live with the day to day scorn of the unbelievers who make up the establishment).
Having decided to begin my long and difficult task of telling over my divine revelation to the world from the comfort of a Starbucks, I must first recruit for myself followers. Such a task requires a charismatic personality. You see, most graduate students would not be cut out for being the Messiah as they are unable to keep the attention of a crowd of undergraduates even when backed by the force of course requirements and grades. How can they expect to hold the attention of people walking across the campus oval with just threats of hellfire?
Now one might think that the best place for the Messiah to go, in order to spread his message, is to established houses of worship, doing a weekend run of mosques on Fridays, synagogues on Saturdays and churches on Sundays. One assumes that these houses of worship are filled with people who believe in God and desire to hear God's message for them. The problem with this strategy is that such people can be presumed to be satisfied with their religion and are unlikely to be looking to exchange theirs for a new model.
It is the practice of Jewish Alcoholics, Chemically Dependents and Significant Others (JACS), a support group for Jews struggling with addiction, to offer, during their weekend gatherings, in addition to the variety of different denominational services, a session titled "Why I am not in synagogue." Rabbis attending these gatherings are often advised to attend those sessions because it gives them a chance to hear from the very people they would not normally hear from, those not in synagogue.
What is good advice for rabbis is also good for the Messiah. I need to find and reach out precisely to the people who might want to attend an establishment religious service but are not made welcome because they are not "respectable." They might be addicts, prostitutes, homosexuals, just plain liberal, or simply too poor to afford special clothing for weekly services.
To reach out to such people requires a message that vindicates them as outsiders. "Listen up all you people not in services, God sees into your hearts and hears your prayers. Do you think God can be worshipped in gilded churches built on stolen money, with hands dripping the blood of the innocent? God knows that, unlike all those people who pretend to believe in him and haughtily call out to him, it is among you, the dispossessed, that he is truly loved. God has therefore sent you, the true believers, Rev. BZ Messiah to receive his message."
Having vindicated these outsiders, it is important to offer them hope of a future world order in which the establishment will be overturned and your followers will assume their rightful places, which they have been wrongfully usurped from them in this world. "Behold days are coming, says the Lord, when I shall shatter the idols on all foreign-built cars. Those who awaken late to sip their non-Starbucks fair-trade coffee shall find that the whipped cream has run out. The barren ones who mourn for not being able to get married shall dance through the street."
As part of my war against the establishment, it is only reasonable that I denounce the government, which is a bastion of the established religions and refuses to grant me tax-exempt status. Thus Rev. BZ Messiah says: "God damn America, the nipple-ring of Satan's wardrobe malfunction, for it has robbed the Lord's house to fund its dominion over the Earth."
As the Messiah and only bringer of God's message to Earth, it is only natural that I assume a prominent role in my religion way above that of other religious leaders. I will tell my followers where to live and whom to marry and, the moment that any of them dare to challenge a single whim of mine, I will cast them out. Some outsiders might object and call me a cult leader, but they are missing the point; it is all about me. I am the entire religion so it is only logical that the religion moves and breathes in tune with my every personal quirk. Of course, these outsiders are irrelevant; they are too much part of the establishment to ever consider joining my religion anyway. All I care about is my small band of dedicated followers and making sure they are willing to die for me (or at least live with the day to day scorn of the unbelievers who make up the establishment).
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