Bibliogestions: Spring 2013

I've taken a long vacation from politics, which is probably from the best. The governments of America and Israel continue to disappoint, terrible things continue to happen in the world, and every time I turn on talk radio on my drive to work, my urge to punch the dial rises. (Mrs. Yid has banned me from playing anything on the AM dial when she's in the car.)

On the other hand, work and personal study/practice have been going well. I blogged about the latest shul-happenings over at TCFS, but I've also been pleased at having been slowly getting through some meaty Judaica books over the last few months. Here are some highlights:

- Shabbetai Zvi was really, really nuts. But also a pretty interesting figure inasmuch as he was able to convince as much as 1/3 of the world's Jewish population that he was the Messiah. John Freely, a Turkish historian of British extraction, though not Jewish, does a great job delving into the medieval background of the time as well as the place. He also capable dissects Zvi's theology and helps chart his legacy among his various branches of followers. I feel like this was great background to prep me for reading about Jacob Frank.

- Yehuda Amital was a true mensch and a great model for our time. Personally traditional in practice, he understood the primacy of ethical behavior and cooperation with people as well as institutions that he didn't always agree with. Perhaps one of the best examples of a principled moderate within the last 50 years, in so many different spheres and contexts: politics, culture, religion, the Holocaust, and more. Amital doesn't shy away from wrestling with harsh truths and sometimes contradictory values, and frequently comes to some sort of decent, if not always perfect, compromise. He's also quite admirable to me in that he tried to avoid creating a cult of personality around himself and emphasized the need for his students-- and by extension, everyone-- to think independently for themselves.

Amital would be the first to admit he wasn't perfect, and his principled moderation has its limits. If you believe in certain absolute values, be they territorial maximalism a-la Gush Emunim, or full equality for women and GLBT Jews, for example, Amital poses a bit of a conundrum. There were causes that were important to him that he seems to have subjugated in order to not go too far against the status quo. In some ways, it's easy to look back on his actions with nostalgia and say, "If only we could all be more moderate like him." But at the same time, I recognize that there are absolute values worth fighting for, and sometimes they require the willingness to fight the status quo, and not always try to change it from within. However Amital's ability to be honest about conflicting values and at least try to balance them (while still, in principle and practice, trying to be open to other points of view) makes him a very powerful, inspiring, and IMO, modern figure that more Jews could benefit from learning about and from.

- Elie Wiesel continues to inspire my Jewish imagination. Wiesel isn't for everybody, and sometimes his style can be a little off-putting, but I think I have enough right-to-left brain that I'm basically able to admire his poetics (particularly impressive given it's in translation) while also not letting it distract from the ideas. After having a couple of Wiesel books kicking around for a while I finally got around to finishing them and was quite impressed with the force of personality and imagination of the early Hasidic masters.

It may just be my own biases, but I think Wiesel is at his best when describing the "darker" rebbes who lived in poverty or conflict but who still had wonderful human qualities rather than the fancier rebbes like the Rizhiner, who depending on your POV come across as verging on exploitive and pompous (despite Wiesel's attempts to present their opulence as a "facade", such as the claim that the Rizhiner wore golden shoes but no soles on the bottoms). Simcha Bunim of Pryzucha, the Kotzker, the Seer of Lublin and the Holy Jew are the men that speak most to me, because they do not seem to be hiding the pain of life behind the curtain of joy. They know what true pain is and continue in spite of it (or sometimes don't). I find that far more powerful than other personalities who seem like they basically don't have as much to wrestle with.

For this reason I was particularly interested by another Wiesel book which focused specifically on Hasidic masters and melancholy. In examining Pinhas of Koretz, Naftali of Ropshitz, the Seer of Lublin, and Baruch of Medzebozh, Wiesel shows the other side of the great leaders, the darker, pained, and human sides, and how each of them dealt with these issues, with various degrees of success. I was reading this book while coming to terms with my own mental health issues and history (and exploring medication), and found it to be very resonant.

- Finally, I also read-- and greatly enjoyed-- 9 1/2 Mystics, a book I had heard about for a while but only remembered as being "the one with an anecdote about naked Gershom Scholem." I really enjoyed it, it reminded me a bit of Jew in the Lotus but is far more grounded in Jewish contexts. The author, Herbert Wiener, is both an educated and liberal Jew as well as an intellectual and spiritual seeker, and those qualities, combined with his strong perseverance as well as good luck to have been around and writing in the 1940s-80s, results in a fascinating compendium of interviews with some of the greatest mystical minds of the last century: Weiner helped organize lectures for Scholem, studied with Steinsaltz, chatted with Buber, visited the Belzer court, had several audiences with M.M. Schneerson, and challenged Zvi Yehuda Kook on how close or far he had reinterpreted his father's teachings. Most fascinating from an Orthodox sociology POV is Weiner's experience and reportage of various Jewish groups that have since gone through major developments, such as Rav Ashlag before the Kabbalah Centre boom, Chabad when Schneerson was still alive and kicking, Breslov before they became as visible as they now are (and before the Uman pilgrimage became the new Jewish Woodstock), and of course Zvi Yehuda Kook back when he was still a man and not yet a departed saint.

Not only does Weiner's book contain fascinating insights into what Jewish mysticism - or mysticisms-- is and could be, but, much like Arthur Hertzberg's Jew in America, also does a wonderful job of showing the living history of a religion and culture still being formed, reformed, and endlessly debated. Anyone who's interested in the topic or any of the personalities I mentioned will find it a fun read.

Profoundly Not Ok

Real life has been busy, so the blog hasn't. More to come, but first... geez. We've talked about Lazer Brody's lack of sense, timing, and self-awareness many times before. We've also discussed the fact that often Lazer seems to genuinely want to use his words to help people heal, which I respect.

But here's the thing, Lazer. Stuff like this... It doesn't help. At all.

We've been flooded with letters of grieving people asking about the meaning of this. All I can say is that Nathan and Raizy were undoubtedly flawless tzaddikim whom Hashem chose as ritual sacrifices for all of Klal Yisroel. Such a tragedy obligates every single one of us to wake up, assess ourselves and return to Hashem.

You know what isn't going to bring anybody close to anything remotely resembling traditional Judaism? Suggesting that innocents being killed in tragic, senseless accidents is part of God demanding ritual sacrifice. In such a tragedy anybody with an ounce of sense and humility is obligated to do nothing more than say a prayer for the dead, support their families, and shut their damn mouths.

The couple's last name - Glauber - is Yiddish for "believer". We have nothing else to lean on but our emuna, our belief in Hashem.

Stop. Just stop. Stop the pat answers, stop pretending to know what God's "plan" is to make horrible car accidents make sense, and stop leaning on gematria or surname etymology or any other nonsense a first year yeshiva students learns in Half-Assing your Drash 101. People are dead, and this is not ok. Give condolences, start a charity fund, but PLEASE, no more. People are watching and hurting, and this... isn't helping anyone.

Some people shouldn't make history movies

As friends who know us IRL can attest, my wife and I are rather different. One area where this comes out is in our movie preferences. I tend to like movies that are more story or character driven, whereas my better-looking half enjoys what she calls "stylish world-building" through costumes, sets, what have you. I like Braveheart, she likes Eraserhead, that sort of thing.

Since I read a lot of history, I am particularly engaged by movies that tell historical stories well. Everything doesn't have to be at a college thesis level of accuracy, but it is nice to see directors, writers and producers taking their source material seriously, especially when it's a heavier subject or one that continues to have a lot of modern-day implications/ramifications.

And then there are... the other guys. The guys that don't seem to feel any obligation to the history behind their stories, who become so wrapped up in the story they've made up or decided to tell that the real history is forced to take a back seat. A way back seat.

One of the directors whose approach to history I absolutely can't stand is Tarantino. Firstly, because I just don't like his work. I dislike his aesthetics, I dislike his writing, he and I have vastly different ideas of what makes something funny, and so on. But more than that, he just seems to take such a low-brow approach to telling history that it's like you're punished for knowing anything about his subjects. When I saw Inglorious Basterds, it didn't fill me with Jewish pride, and it didn't make me sit back and chuckle at the "clever" inversion of Jewish power tropes. It made me angry that Tarantino thought the best Holocaust story worth telling was some crap about fake Jewish commandos beating up Nazis with baseball bats. There are countless real stories of real people he could have used, at least for a starting-point, dealing with real emotions, real consequences and real history, and instead the Holocaust became a set piece for him to talk about... scalping? About how it's fun to kill Nazis? Feature Brad Pitt in a bad mustache and worse accent? Make Hitler jokes?

I found Basterds frustrating, but at least it wasn't as fundamentally upsetting Benigni's Life is Beautiful was. I found that movie offensive on just about every level, and have continued to struggle to understand how people saw anything to like in that movie. I'm sorry, but I have a really hard time letting myself drift into fantasy when WE'RE AT AUSCHWITZ. It just kind of kills the fantasy for me, and causes me to wonder about the mental health or empathy levels of the people that can. I don't like set piece movies as a general rule, but there's some history, especially tragic history, that seems really inappropriate to use for these purposes. I don't need to see the Sucker Punch take on Hiroshima or the Irish Potato Famine.

So too, I am very skeptical of Tarantino's latest poject, Django Unchained (I will admit upfront I have not seen the movie and am going on the comments of others). From what I've read it sounds like Tarantino has again decided to take a major topic in world history and use it as a background to insert irritating and context-less characters whose primary motivation is to be awful to each other. Color me unimpressed.

There are two big reasons why I find Tarantino so distasteful on these kinds of movies. First of all, he seems to be almost proud about swooping in from the wings to tell someone else's story without any background of what the real history was or what its ongoing impacts are on the people it happened to. Tarantino's blase approach puts very little effort into understanding how Jews understand or process the Holocaust, or blacks understand or process slavery. History is treated as infinitely malleable and apparently you can have your characters do anything, no matter how unfactual, and because it's "alternative history," we're supposed to buy it. For Tarantino there's apparently no difference between doing a movie about the Holocaust and adapting Twilight or Roald Dahl.

But then at the same time, he likes to get on his high horse and lecture the communities he's writing about, telling them that somehow his brilliant take on their history has some redeeming, high-art quality that not only everyone should appreciate and acknowledge, but that may even be able to help those communities move on from those tragic events. Black teenagers should watch Django to understand slavery was bad, and Jews should watch Basterds to understand that Nazis are bad. And once you understand slave owners and Nazis are bad, you are supposed to understand that killing them in excruciating detail is awesome. And then you have a movie. Tarantino wants it both ways: on the one hand, his work isn't supposed to be serious history, so it can't be challenged for being fictional or just plain wrong, but on the other hand, it's ground-breakingly deep and can heal generations-old wounds. Tarantino's history has no substance but still wants to be treated as important commentary. It doesn't work, and if history matters to you-- be it yours or someone else's-- it comes across as lazy and dismissive. "Your real stories aren't important or interesting, Jews or black people-- let me tell you why my made up crap is so much better." It's basically one step away from what Mel Gibson tried to do with the Hanukkah story (though then again, being a fundamentalist, at least Gibson might have stuck to the text a little more). To me at least, it reads as incredibly arrogant.

This is where I feel Tarantino actually starts hurting the history he supposedly wants to talk about: he can claim that his alternative history is clever or satirical, but that only works when the audience knows the real history to start with, and I'm not convinced most of them do. And because he isn't invested in understanding his subject matter through the eyes of the people it happened to, he doesn't really have a whole lot of standing to comment on it, so his POV comes across as very skewed. For example, Tarantino doesn't understand why Jews might have a problem with violently killing or gratuitously torturing Nazis because he's never bothered to find out how real Jews reacted to the real life atrocities and traumas of losing their families. He can't relate to it, therefore he dismisses those feelings and representations in film (hand-wringing, as he calls it) as unrealistic. He's decided he knows how people would "realistically" react to that situation, and that's all there is to it. Never mind that there's a lot of documentation showing that most Jews didn't react to the war with revenge, and that the ones who did weren't doing it for fun or thrills but as a deeply pained response to intense trauma at having their entire society annihilated. Tarantino complained about there being no Holocaust stories that talked about fighting back, but the truth is that he's never bothered to look. He could find any number of real stories about real people and examine what they did and why they did it. Those would be stories with context, depth, and integrity, because they could examine and present real moral dilemmas and conflicts. But Tarantino doesn't do those kinds of stories, because he feels that moral dilemmas seem "like a movie, not real life." Which I personally find hilarious because when I look at Tarantino characters, all I see are caricatures and cartoons. Spielberg and Edward Zwick are far from perfect directors, but I'd take Munich, Defiance and even Schindler's List over Basterds any day. Tarantino likes to present himself as a genius director, but he really just comes across as a gore-obsessed lunkhead.

Tarantino's approach to story and characters would frustrate me no matter what his topics were, but it's especially problematic when he decides to apply his low-brow, high-blood method to the Holocaust and slavery. He can claim he's just trying to entertain people, but a lot of people who see his history movies are coming in ignorant and leaving even more ignorant, but now thinking they now know more than when they came in. Black people don't need to see Django to understand their history, they need to be able to get as much of a national platform as Tarantino and get to tell their own stories through their own eyes. I don't buy the claim that people who care about history should be happy that Django (or Lincoln, which I haven't followed as closely) are "at least making people think about the Civil War." No. We can do better, and should want film-makers to do better. I don't accept that my only choices are Ken Burns' coma-juice or Tarantino's genocide-poitation.

When alternative history is done for the purposes of comedy or obvious fantasy, then I suppose it can be successful (or at least stands more of a chance). Cowboys vs. Aliens and Robin Hood: Men in Tights both come to mind. But movies that present alternative history in a realistic or plausible manner, by directors that claim they're actually honoring their subject matter by throwing in tons of crap that never happened, risk doing more harm than good. If you want to make a silly action, romance or horror movie, then go ahead. You can even use slavery or Nazis in it. But be explicit that that's what you're doing, and don't pretend like you're helping whoever's history you decided to rip off for your back-story.

Wrapping up the Year

So, how about 2012? Here are some things I meant to blog about but didn't get to:

Personal stuff

- First of all, I prepared a gigantic Hanukkah presentation for my middle-schoolers and it went quite well. Highlights included funny music videos (Matisyahu, Maccabeats and Eran Baron-Cohen), lots of latkes and donut holes, and re-enacting the death of Elazar Avran with a student volunteer, an expo marker, and me as the mortally wounded elephant.

Some people object to an ecumenical Hanukkah message, pointing out that the holiday celebrates people who were emphatically not tolerant of others. I think the history can be presented either way-- in the context of a classroom, I think it's legitimate to frame it as a conversation-starter about personal and national rights-- specifically, the right to be different and live/worship as you please (or as I framed it, rather than seeing it as a Jewish Christmas, Hanukkah is better understood as a Jewish mash-up of July 4th and Thanksgiving-- combining national as well as religious significance and rights). Would Judah Maccabee have been ok with the various expressions of Judaism we see today? Probably not. Then again, I know plenty of Jews-- myself included-- who wouldn't be very ok with killing a guy for worshiping an idol or running around forcibly circumcising your neighbors. I reserve the right to pick and choose.

- On a related note, we visited Mrs. Yid's mispocha. We were informed we would be attending midnight mass with the family. We wore our respective Jewish headgear (scarf and kippa). As Mrs. Yid predicted, there were precisely zero questions and comments from my in-laws, so it's impossible to tell what they thought of it. (Note that this is the exact opposite of what happens with my parents, who are nothing if not vocal-- about everything.) To celebrate Christmas, the church rang bells and set off fireworks. Since this was 12:30 am, I'm sure this did not endear them with their neighbors.

This was the first time I have flown with a kippa on. It is the first time in a long time I have been "randomly searched." Mrs. Yid notes that she has been "randomly searched" every time since covering her hair a year and a half ago.

I find it much easier to wear a kippa in public when I am somewhere I have never been and around people who don't know me. Food for thought.

- Our friend Avraham had his adult bar mitzvah along with 6 other congregants. Half of the b'nai mitzvah class were converts, and many of them were dedicated, longtime members. It was very cool to see hear all the different stories and paths that have brought people to Judaism in general and our shul in particular. Also, after shul Abbot Yid called me and asked why I hadn't picked up earlier that morning. When I told him we were at services he scoffed, "Oh, I'm sorry, you were busy BEING HOLY!" I continue to wonder when he will get over this stuff. Probably never.

- I am leading Carlebach davening this Shabbat. Wish me luck!

National/Media stuff

- Dennis Prager has a university. Considering he spends his time writing crap like how "as a Jew, I love Christmas because it makes me feel tingly all over," this pains me greatly.

- Israel is having an election. All the candidates seem either outright incompetent or supremely unsatisfying. I am intrigued by the shake-up among the religious, left and nationalist right political sectors, though at this point it seems way too early to tell what will come from any of it. (Though big kudoses to Shas for managing to be racist against Africans and bigoted towards Russian converts in the same election cycle. Mazel tov, jerks.)

- With all the school shootings happening, it's a strange time to be a teacher. I find it very irritating that so much of the national media/random pundits feel qualified to blather on about what teachers "should" do during a school shooting without apparently knowing anything about school safety procedures. At every school I've ever taught at, the training focuses on putting classes into lockdown mode until the threat is identified and/or contained, then evacuating. As cold as it may sound to people, this procedure and training helped keep Newtown from being an even worse massacre. Can there be additional steps added? Sure. But don't tell me that teachers are should be pulling a Rambo when everything they hear from the school is, "lock your door and keep your kids safe." And yes, while I realize the issue may be more complicated than merely gun supply, that does seem to be a far more logical place to start than random pat answers like saying we should "focus on morality" (how?) or that it's because we've taken God out of schools (explain the 60+ US school shootings before 1962, Huckabee).

 I don't see easy answers to the school shooting issue, but I do think that some combination of increased gun control legislation, mental health resources and refocused school security systems would be a good start. I don't think arming teachers or passing blustery laws that score political points but don't change the reality on the ground are good answers.

- Lastly, conversations regarding Newtown and theodicy have helped me better articulate some aspects of my understanding of God. Namely, why the notion of God causing disasters makes so little sense to me. (Adapated from a Dovbear comment I made a few weeks ago.)

If you look around, the world does not seem to be controlled. If God is a factor, it seems to operate as an undercurrent, not an obvious force. As such, my conception of God is not focused on the idea of a miracle-maker or a punishment-dealer. My God is one of suggestion and hope. When I daven, I always take a moment to insert a personal prayer where I ask for blessings for my family, for my friends, for my coworkers, for the leaders of the world, and for myself. I ask for health, for happiness, for peace, and for wisdom. But those blessings aren't for miracles, and I don't expect them to be fulfilled miraculously.

For me, prayer is an articulation of hope, and by speaking to God I am trying, in some small way, to reach out to whatever forces may influence the universe. It may do nothing more than make me feel better. It may help reaffirm to me what my goals for myself, others and the world are and thereby spur me a little step closer to making them come true. I don't pray for God to move mountains, but to touch people's hearts, to make them care about each other and about doing the right thing. I pray that somehow, this force we call God will help influence good and brave people, so that eventually they outnumber and overcome the evil and apathetic and help tip the scales of history.

To me, that is God's job, not making it rain, helping me win the lottery, or shielding people from terrible events-- because I believe that those things by necessity will always happen. But if there is a God and he does influence the world, my greatest hope is that he will help us, impact us, empower us, to become better about preventing our own tragedies and reaching out to those touched by them. That's the God I believe in.

Shabbat shalom.

When editors take a nap

Did the Jerusalem Post just decide it doesn't need editors? You'd think after that ridiculous front-page typo a few years ago they'd realize someone should probably look at their stories before they post them all willy-nilly. Who do they think they are, me?

Anyway, here's the latest head scratcher from the Post:

If you don't know, the man in the picture is Yoel Kraus, a longtime activist from Neturei Karta in Jerusalem, a guy so anti-Zionist he has his own cow so as not to taint his holy stomach with "Zionist milk." No, really.

So here's the million dollar question: what's the relevance of showing a picture of a well-known Israeli activist who as far as I know has never left his zip code with a story happening in Poland? Were they trying to go with a random "background shot" of a Haredi guy and just wound up picking Kraus? How did no one spot this?

The Wars of the Jews, cont.

Garnel wrote a nice comment. I had so much to say it became another post. Whoops.

Garnel writes:

Here's what I see as the fundamental difference between the Orthodox and the non-orthodox.The Orthodox ask: how can I be a good Jew? Let me open up the halacha books and find out.The Heterdox ask: how can I be a good Jew? Well, my values include X, Y, and Z so I'll say that those values are Jewish values and be a good Jew. 

Now obviously this is not about conscious statements but when you hear heterodox people talking about how supporting gay marriage or unrestricted abortion is a Jewish value then you get the impression that heterodox Judaism is defined as "Here are my values, and I'll call them Jewish". And then an adjective in front appears. 

In addition, there's a branding disagreement. For the Orthodox there's a clear definition of Judaism - matan Torah, one God, supremacy of halacha, etc. Now within Orthodoxy there is a battle being wages over a bunch of peripherals, stuff you identify in your post like the rationalists vs the irrationalists (eg. Slifkin controversy) but the basics are what define Judaism. 

So when someone comes along and says "Well I'm a Reform Jew so I practice Judaism even though I don't believe in Matan Torah" we look over and say "Well that's like saying that Sprite you're holding is really a Coke because you want to have Coke but not to actually buy it.

My response:

Thanks for your comment, Garnel. It's nice to be able to discuss topics like this without things getting too heated.

I think that your description of heterodox Jews is true in some cases. However just like there's a range among Orthodoxy, there's a wide range of what makes someone a heterodox Jew (for the purposes of this discussion I'm separating secular Jews from heterodox Jews, whom I define as people that attend a synagogue at least once a year and/or have membership in a synagogue), ranging from minimally engaged 2-times a year Jews all the way up to heterodox rabbis, and I think most intellectually honest people would be hard-pressed to claim that children can spend eight or twelve years in heterodox Jewish day schools and come out of that not knowing anything about Judaism. You may question the prism through which the information or the message is diffused, and you may be correct that the areas emphasized may not be the same as in an Orthodox school, but you have to at least concede that some heterodox Jews have a basic, even fairly detailed, knowledge of Judaism-- though their interpretations of what "Jewish values" are may differ from many Orthodox perspectives. (I realize plenty of heterodox Jews don't send their kids to day schools, but for this discussion I'd like to talk about them a little bit to at least establish that committed/educated Jews exist outside of Orthodoxy.)

Furthermore, I think it's not unreasonable for people to integrate their Jewish values with other values or causes that are important to them, particularly since there are plenty of areas where modern and Jewish values/principles overlap. Tikkun olam gets a bad rap as being overused, but part of being a good Jew is being a good person, and many mitzvot can legitimately be thought of as "good deeds." We may disagree over the specifics of mitzvot ben adam l'makom, but everyone agrees, at least on paper, that mitzvot ben adam l'chaveiro are important. Visiting the sick, giving to charity, not humiliating others, being stewards of the environment, etc... These are all modern values as well as Jewish ones and I don't see why people interpreting their actions as least partially through a Jewish filter is such a bad thing.

Yes, some people may just take their contemporary values and call them Jewish. On the other hand, people who are more educated and thoughtful about Judaism and its values may be better able to articulate where their modern values and some Jewish values differ. My guess is that any day school graduate who's taken even quasi-serious Talmud classes (which are required among most of them) would be able to give you a list of issues they've encountered in their studies that they find problematic. In some cases people may be opting out of some Jewish practices out of apathy or disinterest or assigning other values Jewish status or significance out of ignorance, but the mere fact of choosing does not indicate ignorance. It can just as easily be the result of informed choice, of learning about Jewish values, finding some in conflict with modern values they sincerely believe in (one major one being egalitarianism), and making a thoughtful decision best aligned with their personal conscience. You can personally disagree with that approach, but it's not fair to dismiss it as just being a case of liberal Jews not knowing what they're talking about.

Now, if someone takes a reductive approach to their Judaism and says that Judaism is solely defined by working at soup kitchens, planting trees or marching for Darfur, then I think that's unfortunate and I disagree with that view as being shortsighted and misinformed-- however I think you can make the same error in the other direction by spending all of your time checking for bugs in your lettuce, exercising your OCD, or studying Talmud to the exclusion of everything else, a-la Rav Elyashiv/Yoel Teitelbaum/Rav Scheinberg. That's part of the reason why though I have a different relationship to halacha, I have a lot of respect for the Modern Orthodox world because they really do attempt to strike a serious balance between two worlds, and I think that balance, to one degree or another, is quite important: The stereotype of Orthodox Jews is that they're overly legalistic and insular, while heterodox Jews are all supposedly super granola hippy types who don't know their Hillel from a ham sandwich. The reason these stereotypes exist is because they illustrate some uncomfortable realities, but that doesn't mean that the stereotypes are reality.

In my case, I fully realize that I do not live a fully halachic lifestyle and have no problem saying so-- part of this is because there are parts of halacha I disagree with, and part of it is that I don't accept halacha as being a fully binding system. By that same token, I also have no problem admitting that there are parts of traditional Judaism I don't follow. The issue, as I see it, is that so many people, particularly institutional leaders (but also laypeople) are so personally invested in their branding that no one is willing to admit that there is not a single Judaism, there are multiple ones. It's a spectrum, and not just a horizontal spectrum, but a vertical one, as well:

Something like this, for the sake of having a visual model.

Do you focus on ritual mitzvot or ethical mitzvot, or do you try to cover all of them to the best of your ability? My firm belief is that people select their priorities and the rest follows suit. Most people do simply not have enough mental, financial, or temporal resources to apply themselves equally in all aspects of Judaism, and if some folks are going to attack Jews who spend their time engaging in activism but don't put a lot of effort into, say, text study, they should have the honesty to focus their next criticism on textually literate Jews who ignore the principles of justice that those same texts spend so much time talking about.

The point is that everybody chooses. People choose what theology they actually believe in, what stuff they pretend to believe in for appearance's sake, and what stuff they just plain ignore. So honestly, part of the issue with branding is not that Reform Jews are maintaining "I'm practicing Judaism;" it's that Orthodox Jews will never admit that Orthodox Judaism is not synonymous with Judaism (TM). That meta-brand, if you will, is bigger than any one movement, even Orthodoxy. I see "Judaism" as being the collective output and worship of klal israel, and so I have no problem acknowledging my Judaism is not Orthodox Judaism-- I've never claimed anything to the contrary-- but I'd never be willing to say "my Judaism is not real Judaism," which seems to be the subtext of what you're saying when you use the example of a Reform Jew saying "I practice Judaism." The reality is all of us are practicing forms of Judaism. The Judaism you have is different from what Abraham had, from what Moses had, from what the Maccabees had, and in some ways, even from what Rashi or Rambam had. Claiming otherwise because you need to believe in an infallible, perfect chain of Torah is the kind of thinking that leads to people saying Moses wore a streimel or that Ever's tent was actually a yeshiva.

I don't believe we're talking about Coke versus Sprite here (which would be something like comparing Judaism and Hinduism). The better model is Coke and Pepsi. Are they both colas? Well the ingredients vary and there are clear differences (at least according to my soda-drinking friends), but even the most rabid Coke/Pepsi partisans have to agree that yes, they're both the same kind of soda. And while I have no problem admitting I'm a Coke and not a Pepsi, I will get annoyed if I start being told that the only true cola is Pepsi and that it's been that way for time immemorial.

(Hmm, for some reason I'm now craving something fizzy...)

Committing to Engagement

Garnel had a post last week about the Reform and Conservative movements that was framed around the idea that non-Orthodoxy's raison-d'etre is a "lack of commitment." He believes that this, in turn, is precisely the reason why so those movements are losing members. As he put it,

how do you build a strong feeling of commitment to a philosophy based on a lack of one? 

A movement that makes any actual Jewish practice optional can't expect to raise large numbers for a rally. No one is going to pack a stadium with a crowd shouting "We want to do whatever we want and still be considered good Jews!"  Yes, there will always be candidates for their so-called rabbinic programs but how many dedicated pro-feminist and pro-gay people who also have a liking for Bible studies are there out there?  And how can they connect to congregations that see a lack of connection as part of their Jewish identity?

Let's start by putting aside the strawmen of non-Orthodox Jews perpetually searching for the perfect rabbi who will give them permission to do whatever they want while still being declared "good Jews." I don't know anyone who lives that way and if they do, I hope they get some help. While we're at it, we can also shelve the line about liberal congregation members viewing "a key part" of their identity being a "lack of connection."You know, because the whole point of joining a community is so you can keep feeling good and alienated. (Is Garnel confusing unaffiliated and non-Orthodox here? Is he vaguely alluding to the challenges of non-Orthodox kiruv? I can't tell.)

Anyway, this was the part that really tweaked me:

Reform needs Orthodoxy (we supply them with all those OTD's) but the American Jewish community does not need inauthenticity.  It needs an open admission that a lack of interest in proper Judaism is not in itself a genuine form of Judaism and to stand up and create real standards that define them.

First, I agree with Garnel that the primary problems in American Jewish life today are a lack of interest and engagement in Jewish education, culture, identity, and so on. There's no question that the liberal movements are shrinking, though there are plenty of reasons offered as to why.

However, no one is served by simplistic, reductionist and ultimately dishonest depictions of what liberal Judaism-- or liberal Jews-- believes.

Let's start with the movements themselves: from my research and experience, both personal and academic, I strongly disagree that the ethos of non-Orthodox movements is "a lack of interest in proper Judaism". Quite frankly, this gives Orthodoxy more credit and importance in the eyes of the non-Orthodox than it deserves. Liberal rabbis don't go to seminary for six years to spite the Orthodox. I don't wake up on Saturdays and go to shul because I'm thinking, "Yay, I can't wait to go do Judaism WRONG!" The engaged non-Orthodox Jews I know have many affirmative reasons they choose to be Jewish, and choose their particular path in Judaism. In my experience, "I don't want to be Orthodox" isn't often on the list.

The simple matter is, for many American Jews, including those with strong Jewish educations and who are committed to Judaism and Jewish identity, Orthodoxy is not even an option. A skeptical or scientific POV-- which is increasingly common these days-- is largely incompatible with the philosophical and theological demands of Orthodoxy, and if you don't have those as a motivator, it becomes extremely difficult to take on mitzvot that have practical ramifications in your daily life-- to say nothing of the fact that Orthodox belief and practice contain some things that, to modern eyes are, at best, extremely challenging, and at worst, deeply problematic, even offensive. And, as Garnel wrote in his post about YCT, Orthodox culture is increasingly less open to differences of opinion or practice. So given all that, why would anyone who hasn't had some sort of mind-blowing experience where they're suddenly convinced of its existential correctness choose Orthodoxy? The mere suggestion is a total non-starter. And yet many Jews still feel that being Jewish-- in some form-- is important to them. They value it. So they find some middle point. That's the motivation. The binary nature of his post suggests that if a Jew isn't willing to be Orthodox they might as well leave Judaism entirely. I don't see how that helps them, or the Jewish people.

Is there superficiality in liberal communities? Of course. Is there ignorance, apathy and laziness? Yes again. However, the more I read about the various layers within Orthodoxy, the more it becomes apparent that these issues are not limited to liberal Judaism. No community is safe from apathy or disengagement, not even the Haredi communities which do their best to ensure continuity by stigmatizing the outside world and keeping their children as segregated as possible.

Garnel may see non-Orthodox Judaism as illegitimate and clueless, and I don't deny that the movements have their issues, practical as well as existential. However I see the major divide in klal israel not being over a lack of interest, but a lack of a common worldview, both of existence and of Judaism itself. Orthodox Jews view existence through the prism of halacha and Orthodox theology first, and apply this same rubric to their views of what Judaism is. Non-Orthodox Jews, to varying degrees, view existence through other perspectives (modern, post-modern, scientific, materialist) and then try to graph Jewish law and theology onto it as best they can, which necessarily creates a multiplicity of Judaisms as well. If you genuinely believe in a literal Torah mi-Sinai and that the Torah is literally true as well as infallible, then you're probably not going to take issue with halacha, no matter how at odds it might be with your internal reason or personal ethics or preferences, because it came from God. On the other hand, if you don't share those foundational beliefs, then a lot of halacha just doesn't make a whole lot of sense, and so you're naturally going to use your brain and conscience to the best of your ability to figure out how best to live your life in a way that makes sense to you. For some people this approach will incorporate many elements of halacha, for others, less. But that, I am convinced, is the dividing line: is there one objective truth, or not? And if there is, is it Orthodox Judaism's truth? Statistics suggest that most Jews don't think so.

On a personal level, I consider myself very "interested" in Judaism, and continue to work towards becoming a more educated, thoughtful, and committed Jew. I read the parsha, I study Talmud, I go to shul, and I'm still working on my Hebrew. But since I don't share the foundational beliefs of Orthodoxy, and since I find much in Orthodox practice and culture personally objectionable, my practice is not focused around Orthodox standards, and never will be. Not because I'm "not interested" in Judaism, but because I do not see Orthodoxy as the only "proper" manifestation of Judaism-- not least because I don't believe a single proper Judaism exists in the fist place! What some seem unable or unwilling to realize is that for many like me, this viewpoint doesn't stem from an emotional defiance or specific hostility, but sincere belief. You can come up with all sorts of caused for this belief, but it's there, and I refuse to accept a scenario in which my only choices are "belong to a community that you fundamentally disagree with" or "don't be Jewish."

A lot of times in these types of discussions people will use terms like legitimate, authentic, or the increasingly popular "true." I do believe in concepts of authenticity, but in my view Judaism is too large and too varied to have a single authentic expression. There are traditional beliefs and practices in Judaism, certainly, but those have evolved over time and many would be unrecognizable to, say, a Jew living in the first Temple era, much less one of the patriarchs. I don't think anything can be called Judaism, but I do think that a lot of times people give "tradition" more legitimacy than it's necessarily entitled to. The reality is that there are many ways to do ritual, many ways to find God and/or meaning, and yes, even many ways to observe halacha-- remember that this was part of the reason the rabbis got mad at Yosef Karo for writing the Shulchan Aruch and Rambam for putting down the Principles of Faith.

So while I do believe that you can do things "authentically," I also believe that authenticity is only really meaningful in context-- you can have an authentic Orthodox Jew and an authentic Reform Jew, for instance. They may be doing different things but both are being authentic to their traditions, beliefs and understandings, and that doesn't bother me-- because I see both as being part of Judaism. Obviously, if you disagree with that premise, you have a problem. But that's primarily an Orthodox dilemma, because despite the successes of the B'aal Teshuvah movement and Orthodoxy's claim to "true authenticity," when most American Jews leave their liberal temples, they don't head for an Orthodox shul, they stop going to shul altogether.

That said, while most American Jews have no interest in being Orthodox, many are still attached, in various ways, to being Jewish. So what are their options? If some had their way, these people would "self-deport" and never engage with anything Jewish again. Like it or not, it is through the liberal communities that many Jews come into some form of observance that they otherwise would not participate in at all. Some may think that if they aren't frum or doing things to frum standards whatever they do is treyf anyway; I say if Jews are studying Jewish texts, celebrating Jewish holidays, being involved in Jewish worship, etc, it's a win. Again, it comes down to your perspective: is it better to do something rather than nothing? Because realistically, for many American Jews, that's the choice. Not Orthodox or liberal, but liberal or nothing. Frum folks not liking it doesn't make it not true. So the question becomes: if the choice is liberal or nothing, how does choosing the latter benefit klal israel?

Let's go back to commitment: Obviously, a major focus of being an Orthodox Jew is being committed to halacha, and this is an area where many liberal Jews may differ from them. However I don't believe that liberal Jews are committed to a "lack of commitment"; I think they're committed to being Jewish, and, in some form or another, staying Jewish, in spite of having a complicated, even antagonistic, relationship with Jewish tradition. At their core, affiliated liberal Jews believe in staying connected and engaged with Judaism even if they don't take all of it as gospel; indeed for many of them, it is the precise act of giving themselves permission to look at the tradition in a non-literal and non-binding way that is crucial in helping them to stay connected. I realize that may not make sense to some of our Orthodox compatriots, but I think that's the crux of what many liberal Jews believe. They can criticize if they like, but my sense is that's much closer to the truth than "committing to non-commitment."

I agree that there are some big problems in American Judaism today. But I don't think they center around a lack of "authenticity"-- because that implies that most Jews see Orthodoxy as authentic and still choose not to follow it. That's not what I see going on. I think Reform and Conservative and the others need to figure out how to be authentic to their core principles and spread those messages. If people respond to them and the movements grow, so much the better. If not, then hopefully the present generation of alienated Jews will figure out some kind of connection that works for them. Maybe in a generation's time we'll see a non-Orthodox field less dominated by one or two movements and instead a more equal split between the four major ones. On the other hand, maybe what we're seeing right now is another generational/ideological split like we saw 100 years ago during the huge immigrations of Jews to America. Perhaps when all is said and done, it will leave the liberal movements smaller but stronger, with the more apathetic/less engaged members ultimately deciding to cut the chord. I don't know, and honestly, I don't have a particular preference for how things shake out. I have found a path that works for me and my family and since I don't claim to have access to the one true way, I don't feel all that worried about the existence of unaffiliated Jews in the world, or about whether liberal Judaism will survive in the long-term. People will live their lives the best way they see fit, and if liberal Judaism can speak to them and engage them and touch them, so much the better. If not, then not.

The irony, though, is that while some Orthodox like Garnel rightfully chastise liberal Judaism for sometimes being too idealistic, they simultaneously seem to believe in a fantasy in which somehow if  Reform and Conservative suddenly disappeared, it would lead the masses of unaffiliated and uneducated Jews to suddenly choose Orthodoxy and Orthodox standards as the guidepost for "legitimate" Judaism. That's just as utopian as anything the early Reform rabbis said about the demise of Orthodoxy.

The truth is that the Orthodoxy ship has sailed, and most of the Jewish people opted to stay on the dock. The question is where they go next.

Who decides?

One of the blogs I have on my sidebar is by Mark Paredes, a Mormon blogger at the Jewish Journal who writes about Mormon-Jewish issues. I was going through some of his recent archives and found an article from last month in which Paredes talked about Mormon-Jewish dialogue. That's all well and good, and Parades makes some excellent points about how to do interfaith communication right (for starters, if you want to understand what members of a religion believe, your first step should be to ask members of the faith to speak for themselves, not their critics). However I couldn't help but notice a paragraph where Paredes mentioned the one continual sticking point between our communities:

I deliberately left out any mention of proxy temple ordinances in my speech, which Rabbi Wolpe was quick to note. I took the opportunity, which I will also avail myself of here, to announce that I will no longer discuss the proxy ordinances issue in future presentations. Quite frankly, I’m tired of hearing about it. A small group of Jewish leaders has blown this issue way out of proportion for 20 years; even they decided last year to move on to agenda items that actually affect living Jews, instead of worrying about what a few disobedient Mormons are doing in their own temples. I’ve blogged several times on this issue, and don’t plan to spend more time or effort explaining it. Instead, I will refer curious Jews to the rabbis at the Simon Wiesenthal Center so that they can tell them by what authority they are authorized to speak on behalf of the dead and explain just why they felt it was necessary to carry on this campaign for two decades with the help of an anti-Mormon researcher.

This is where I start to lose respect for Paredes, because while it is true there are plenty of other meaningful and important topics to discuss about the Mormon-Jewish relationship, the fact that Paredes has decided that he's sick of talking about this is galling as well as troubling. I thought part of the point of Paredes' talks is to promote dialogue; so I'm rather confused about the logic of barring proxy baptisms as a legitimate discussion item just because Paredes is sick of the topic. Guess what, Mark? SO ARE WE. The reality is the reason this continues to be a sore point is because members of your community keep doing it; your response should be to encourage your church to better police its members rather than chastise Jews for daring to be offended that you continue, after 20 years, to apparently not care that you're doing something lots of us find offensive.

At his suggestion, I took the time to look up some of Paredes' old posts on the issue. Not surprisingly, they weren't all that satisfactory. Parades repeatedly points out that Mormons believe that their relatives are required to have proxy baptisms, and then usually pats the church on the back for being so magnanimous to exempt "Jewish Holocaust victims," even though other people would like their relatives' names taken out as well:

No one thinks that more than a handful of Mormons (out of nearly 14million today) continue to defy the Church’s policy on name submissions. In other words, we have 99.9999% compliance. While the LDS Church is hierarchical in nature, it is not a police state. If a rebellious member insists on submitting the name of a Jewish non-relative for temple ordinances, his efforts will likely besuccessful. When the Church is made aware of the improper submission, it can and does act to remove it from the ordinances database. Indeed, this is a special promise made only to Jews, though others have requested it as well. After all, Mormons should not be submiting the names of any non-relatives—whether Catholic, Buddhist, Brazilian or Zulu—for temple ordinances. However, if a Jewish name is submitted improperly, the name will be removed if a request is made. This unique arrangement is a testament to the respect and love that Mormons feel for the Jewish community. Our leaders have had to walk a fine line between accommodating Jewish leaders’ wishes while affirming our obligation to perform temple ordinances for our kindred dead, and I think that they have largely succeeded.

How big of you, Mark. The fact that you guys have decided to give a medium-sized crap about Jews who died between 1939 and 1945 really makes me feel better in the light of the tiny crap you give about Jews who died in all other years (to say nothing of Catholics, Buddhists, or Zulus who lived or died at any time). Wow, too bad my various ancestors who were baptized had to go and die in New York instead of Auschwitz like their cousins. Just our bad luck, I suppose.

Every time the issue is raised, Paredes repeats the party line. Only a handful of Mormons are doing it, the LDS leadership wants to respect Jewish wishes, they can only do so much, etc. He also tries to skirt the issue by pointing out that Mormons perform other rites with dead people's names that people usually aren't as vocal about:

When I first started discussing posthumous temple rites with Jews, I quickly noticed that they only raised objections to the ordinance known to Mormons as “baptisms for the dead.” Even though Mormons perform several ordinances for the deceased, Jews focused almost exclusively on that one. [I have never heard a Jew object to the eternal marriage by proxy of a husband and wife who perished in the Holocaust, for example].

Funny thing, Mark, that doesn't make me feel better. At all.

Paredes raises this point as a way of saying that the LDS proxy baptism doesn't mean that the person has actually "become" Mormon, just that it's been offered. But by issue is that the very act of using the person in a religious ritual is perceived, and felt, as a violation. The fact that the Mormons don't see it that way doesn't change this, and the fact that some people think it's not a big deal doesn't change it, either. If someone does something offensive to someone else, it is offensive. You as the offender do not decide when it stops being offensive. You can either work to stop it, or you can be honest and say you don't care. But you most certainly don't get to be mad when we keep bringing it up. The continued insistence by Mormons that proxy baptisms don't matter and that we have no right to be bothered by it, bothers me more than the rites themselves. It's another layer of theological arrogance, best shown in an article from nine months ago when Paredes attacked Elie Wiesel and the Wiesenthal Center:

Last week the charade involving a group of leaders in the Jewish community and the LDS Church’s practice of proxy immersions reached a new low. Elie Wiesel, one of the towering moral figures of our age, found out that his father and grandfather’s names had been submitted by a disobedient member of the church for temple ordinances. The church quickly canceled the submissions, but not before Mr. Wiesel had called on the church (via the Huffington Post) to stop performing temple ordinances for all Jews, not just Holocaust victims. He then asked Mitt Romney to “speak to his own church” about the issue. With all due respect to Mr. Wiesel (and considerable respect is due), he would probably do more good by suggesting to certain Jewish leaders that they mind their own business.

Apparently Jews are only allowed to be offended by topics vetted by Paredes. Who knew?

In the early 90s, a group of Jewish leaders approached the church after discovering that a few members had submitted – in violation of church rules – names of Holocaust victims for LDS temple ordinances. Although these ordinances do NOT confer membership in the church, the leaders claimed to be offended.

They claimed to be offended. Apparently in Paredes' worldview, other people don't have the right or autonomy to actually have their own opinions when it comes to his church.

Had I been in charge of the LDS delegation to the initial [1995] meeting, it would have been a short one. I would have started off by asking the leaders what authority they had to represent dead Jews. The answer? None. 

Stupid question that deflects the issue. Obviously no one can "truly" speak for the dead; they're not here. However one can look to the beliefs of a community, of families, and in some cases, of the dead themselves to guess what they might have wanted-- assuming that this is your actual goal. If your goal is find ways to justify behavior that members of that community find offensive, then you play stupid games like this. In the Jewish community, this issue has always been framed as one of a lack of respect-- a lack of respect of Jewish beliefs, and a lack of respect for what the dead most likely would have wanted. Paredes' response exemplifies the Mormon response: we don't care what you think. In Paredes' world, Wiesel has NO RIGHT to be offended that his father and grandfather, who were clearly devoted to Judaism and as far as he knows had zero interest in converting to anything or being used as part of another religion's rituals, were used in this way. He's simply not allowed. Just like Daniel Pearl's family isn't allowed to be offended on his behalf.

Here's a question: what authority do Mormons have to do anything with dead Jews? None other than the authority they claim, which is exactly the same argument Jews claim. The difference is that as the descendants of the people whose names the Mormons are using in their ceremonies and who are part of the same community as the dead, it seems to me that if anyone has more authority to speak for the dead, it's the Jews and not the Mormons. Paredes skirts the issue by saying the Jews are being arrogant by presuming to speak for their own relatives. As I've said several times, the best comparison I can think of to proxy baptism is peeing on someone's grave. Who's to say that your great-grandfather wouldn't have been totally into urine play?

Let's turn it around: Hey Mark! I've got a new religion that has some special rites I'm supposed to do. Yeah, and I have a quota to fill, so I'm going to need some help from your family on this. Oh come on, what's the big deal? For all you know, maybe your grandparents secretly wanted to be exhumed, put into a glass casket, and used in an Aztec-themed rap video? You know, if you keep complaining about this, I'm going to start feeling persecuted!

The only leg Paredes has to stand on in this whole discussion is a claim he makes regarding the 1995 agreement between a Jewish delegation and the LDS church:

the church offered at that time to “freeze” names of all known Holocaust victims for purposes of temple work if the Jewish leaders would agree. Unfortunately, they chose the second option of taking upon themselves the responsibility of notifying the church whenever they discovered the submission of a Holocaust victim’s name. The Jewish leaders knew from the beginning that the option they chose would mean that many names, and sometimes the same names, would continue to pop up in the database. In a stunning moment of candor, someone with detailed knowledge of the early discussions acknowledged to me that one of the reasons that the Jewish leaders chose this option was so they could continue to hold church leaders’ feet to the fire on this issue and eventually reach their ultimate goal: to have the LDS Church declare that Judaism was sufficient for salvation, and temple ordinances were not necessary for Jews.

Sorry Mormons, you may feel burned because some leaders you worked with 20 years ago suggested that we'd settle for you "exempting" Jews who died within a six-year time period. But, yeah, the truth is that we do not want you doing anything with our dead, Holocaust or otherwise, because it bothers the hell out of us, and it's not ok, and it's never going to be ok, and if you want us to shut up about it, then you're going to need to stop doing it, and if you're not going to stop, then we're entitled to complain about it. If you fell for that then it's your own fault.

Rabbis Hier and Cooper have no standing whatsoever to demand that a church change its religious practices because they’re offended by them. They tried that with the Catholics (e.g., the resurrected Good Friday prayer), and were politely told to mind their own business. 

Sorry Mark, you're missing the point. If people are legitimately offended something in another religion, they're entitled to continue to make noise about it. That doesn't mean the other religion is obligated to respond or change, but neither do you have the authority to stop your critics from talking about it. Additionally, the details here are substantially different from the Good Friday example. That's one prayer, it happens once a year, and it's a broad theological statement. The proxy baptism issue is deeply personal and is continually happening all the time.

There are 14 million Mormons, and in the idealized world of the SWC, computers at LDS genealogy centers would somehow be able to detect when even one of them is about to improperly submit a Jewish name for a temple ordinance. This is ridiculous, and they know it. I have a question for them: Why can’t they do something to address the problem of agunoth in the Orthodox community worldwide? Everyone knows that it’s outrageous, and rabbis throughout the world denounce husbands who refuse to grant divorces to their estranged Jewish wives. Why can’t Rabbis Hier and Cooper force every Orthodox husband to toe the line on marriages? Because the husbands have free will, that’s why. 

Funny thing, Mark: last I checked, the LSD church operates according to a hierarchy, whereas Judaism is historically, almost comically, decentralized. Furthermore, your ritual has become digitized. The LDS church owns the databases, they operate all the temples, and they perform the ceremonies. They could do a moratorium on proxy baptisms until their system is better centralized. They could establish new processes to ensure that LDS members who violate church agreements are punished for it. They could increase the burden of proof on people submitting names, requiring them to document their line of descent better. Perhaps most importantly, they actually could establish a "do not baptize" list, documenting every person they've had to take off, and ensuring that if someone tries to baptize them again it raises a red flag. You can do that with computers now. So it's not an issue of can't, it's an issue of won't. If they recognized this as a serious issue, these are some things they could do. Instead, they've told Jewish people who find names to contact them and they'll take them off the lists-- but only if they fall into the one specific category they've "exempted." That's it, even though Paredes admits that the only names that should be submitted, much less used in the ceremonies, are people with Mormon descendants. Is it any wonder some people don't think that's good enough?

The rabbis have also threatened LDS leaders with protests on more than one occasion unless their demands were met. This is a violation of both ethics and decency that is beneath the dignity of rabbis of their stature.  In spite of this persecution, Mormons can take consolation from the fact that Jews, even Holocaust victims, are still not exempted from the requirements of LDS temple ordinances. 

There you have it: in Paredes' world, when Jews complain or even threaten to protest, it constitutes persecution of Mormons. And people accuse Jews of having a victimization complex? Grow the hell up.

The reality is that the LDS church will probably not stop doing this, and so at a certain point you do need to figure out when to move on and how to build positive and productive relationships with other religious groups. But Paredes isn't doing himself any favors by silencing discussion on the topic by essentially saying that "it's not a big deal and you're not allowed to think it is, because I'm done talking about it."

Remember, the whole argument Paredes and the LDS church are trying to advance is that their church is incredibly pro-Jewish, believes in connecting with Jews, supports Israel and all the rest. Well you can't really say all that and demand all this credit for being such good friends with the Jews if when some Jews criticize you your reaction is to say, "I don't want to hear it!" and throw that same supposed friendship back in their face. You can't claim to be sensitive to Jewish feelings and concerns if your response to Elie Wiesel expressing hurt and pain at finding out that his father and grandfather were, in his eyes, at least, dishonored, is to dismiss him by calling him old and suggesting the problem is that he's senile and being taken advantage of by opportunists in the community. Yes, it couldn't possibly be that he has a point!

If Paredes wants to build bridges he needs to recognize that this will continue to be an issue among (some) Jews because we care about it. Paredes does not get to decide when or if Jews cease to care about it, and he most certainly is not in a position to dictate to the Jewish community how they "get" to feel. He can choose what he's willing to discuss publicly, but if he's looking for Jews to say this is ok, I have news for him: as someone affected by this issue, this is not and will never be ok with me. I do not appreciate you using my ancestors' names in any of your rituals, I do not think they would have appreciated it, and there is nothing you can say that will negate that feeling. Furthermore, removing the names, in my opinion, is not the solution. That's not what I want. What I want is for you to reform your procedures for these rituals and stop using non-Mormons' names in your rituals except for the tiny amount of cases where it is "required" by church doctrine. Until that happens, you can expect to keep hearing about it. Feel free to be pissed about it. I know I am.