Can someone please buy this man a clue?

Tzvi wants all his readers to know they're giant jerks- but that he forgives them. The rationale behind him knowing we're jerks is just as strange as his solution to it:

Our Sages teach that if a person understood the great value of abuse, he would wake up each morning and beg G-d to send someone to abuse him that day. A person who is abused and doesn’t answer in return is forgiven of his sins.  

...I’m not referring to the abuse I regularly receive from talkbackers who get angry at me for pointing out the disgrace of living in gentile lands when they could be living in Israel. That abuse is part of being a blog writer. It comes with the job. I am talking about an abuse much more painful – the fact that very few of my readers, even the most faithful amongst them, have purchased my books, so easily available at Amazon Books.

Thought: If people don't buy your books, perhaps it is not a sign of "abuse" but rather that they think you are not a particularly good writer.

As I have mentioned before, I am a novelist at heart.  Blogs are blogs, but a good novel is something entirely different. And here, after I spent literally thousands of hours writing blogs, free of charge, in order to enlighten my beloved brothers and sisters in the exile of the darkness which surrounds them, and the very real dangers they face, when I present them with an opportunity to experience true Jewish literature that has the power to revolutionize their lives, they turn their backs as if it had no value.

Yes, how dare we have opinions about what we want to read? What nerve of us.

Yes, I understand that books cost a few bucks, and that most Internet readers can’t get past a homepage, let alone tackle a 500 page saga like “Tevye in the Promised Land”, but, even if they don’t want to read my novels, they could give them away as gifts. 

Come on guys! I'm not asking you to read the darn things, just buy them! You can use them as coasters if you want! With a little tape and origami skills, the new paperback edition can make a nifty Breslov-style kippa! They're multi-taskers!

Young people love my stories. Old people too. 

Question: If everyone loves your stories, why are you complaining that no one is buying them? How can both these things be true? Is there some sort of devious Napster-style black market thing going on with seniors making illegal Fishman copies and surreptitiously passing them along to the ever-hungry youth market? Are you supposed to be the Jewish Lars Ulrich?

And yes, I realize that my writing is confrontational, dealing with uncomfortable things like G-d, emunah, tshuva, and aliyah, subjects that the majority of people would rather avoid. And I am perfectly aware that until the goyim declare that Fishman is a great novelist, the Jews won’t consider my writing as being of any worth. Yes, I know all of these things, but still, after all of the years that I have invested in my writing, with all of my heart, the apathy which I encounter is painful indeed. 

Did I mention my incredible modesty, as well? I must say, dear readers, it pains me that despite me being so darn fantastic, until I am voted Best Jew Alive, I apparently am doomed to a life of only partial recognition of my supreme awesomeness. If it weren't for my great piety, I'd probably compare myself to Jesus right now. (Is it my imagination, or is Tzvi channeling Ellis Washington?)

Gee Tzvi, when you put it like that, I can't imagine why I haven't been wasting my time and money looking for your boring, didactic, self-important drivel masquerading as fiction before. Just what have I been doing with my life?

And lest you think my motivation is money, on some books my royalties are 20 cents. On others 30 cents. On one or two titles, I earn a buck. That’s the reality of digital ebooks. So I am not in it for the money.

Got it. You're just in it for the ego trip. Good to know.

I have decided to take a hiatus from blog writing, and to use this column to serialize my novels, chapter by chapter, day after day, to let people read, free of charge, in short, non-overwhelming installments, my fictional works, which I have written for the Sake of Heaven, for the enlightenment of Am Yisrael. 

So here we go, for all of my hundreds of thousands of readers who have plastered my face with dry digital saliva by ignoring my books...

That's right, Tzvi. By reading your blog instead of your fiction, we have offended you. What heartless bastards we are. How lucky that you know what we really should be reading.

To review: Tzvi has a semi-popular blog. Tzvi is mad no one wants to read his uninteresting books. Therefore, he decides to force all his blog readers to read his books by turning his blog into an Internet throwback to the Daily Forverts.

Either Tzvi's just shot himself in the e-foot, or we're about to see the Amazing Hand of the Free MarketTM do something interesting.

Stay tuned...

Family History vs. Family Facts

When it comes to genealogy, I have something of a personality split that pops up from time to time. On the one hand, as a researcher and historian, I try to be very cautious about what information I consider reliable and pass along to others. At the same time, as a writer and storyteller, I love the family yarns and narratives, and it's very hard to avoid speculating and "putting pieces together," even when they may not all be there.

An example: When I first started tracing the tree, one of the stories that kept coming up from my great-aunts about their mother's family was that their grandmother had been in a Tsarist prison. As I interviewed each one in turn, I kept getting more pieces of the puzzle. The story is that the grandfather was making his own liquor in their shtetl, that someone informed on him, and that when the police came to arrest him, he wasn't there-- and so his wife took the blame and went to prison for several years. Depending on the chronology, this may have precipitated-- or happened during-- the family's immigration to America. Now, despite there being zero documentation for this, it is one of my favorite bits of family lore, and I have repeated it to various cousins and relatives whenever I get the chance-- though always clearly identifying it as a story.

Given this background, I'm somewhat sympathetic-- though maybe the word "almost" is more appropriate-- to Sen. Marco Rubio's recent debacle with his family history. Rubio, whose star in the GOP has been steadily rising (at least according to the national news media) since his election to Senate in 2010, has made his parents' story of immigration from Cuba a major talking-point of his campaigns and political narrative. According to Rubio, his parents "fled" Cuba after Fidel Castro's coup and he was raised as a son of exiles in Florida. The story is compelling, powerful, and resonates with a lot of people-- both in the Cuban community and beyond it. It's a classic tale of coming to the United States to escape persecution, and it has the additional benefits of the "pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps" narrative, as well as a chance to emphasize how Cuban Communism under the Castros utterly failed, which are undoubtedly major reasons Rubio's story appealed to GOP voters.

There's only one problem with all of this: it's not, strictly speaking, true.

Researchers have found documents showing that the Rubios came to the US in 1956. At the time, Castro was not even in Cuba. He wouldn't take over for another three and a half years. Rubio's parents left Cuba not because of political repression but simply to make a better life.

Rubio has tried a few different tactics to defend his story in light of the newly revealed facts. The first thing he's done is to say that it's not his fault he didn't know this stuff:

In a brief interview Thursday, Rubio said his accounts have been based on family lore. “I’m going off the oral history of my family,” he said. “All of these documents and passports are not things that I carried around with me.”

So... it doesn't matter that I said things that weren't true because I never bothered to verify if they were true? Not the defense I'd go with. A much better version of this argument would be, "I'm as shocked as you are. I was always told, by this relative, that relative, and this other relative, that my parents came here in 1959. " That makes it sound like you actually care about the facts, as opposed to being involved in a tug-of-war between your parents' own documents and the fantastic universe you've created in your head where your Dad led his own anti-Castro militia group (Rubio's Rebels?) through the Cuban highlands, set Fidel's beard on fire, and then beat a hasty but heroic retreat to fight another day (or spawn a kid who would get elected into public office, whatever).

The other approach has been to claim that none of this matters anyway, because details are stupid:

"...It’s not like they discovered my parents were from Canada. My story is essentially the same one. My parents came to this country in search for a better life. They were prepared to live here permanently but always wished they could go back to Cuba," he said.

Again, nice try. There's a world of difference between going back for a visit when you're already established somewhere else and deciding, "Nah, I'll stick with Miami," and suffering actual political repression, to say nothing of the trauma of being a legitimate refugee having to flee a country with nothing and having to start entirely from scratch.

I'm not saying the Rubios had it easy. In a lot of ways their story is quite similar to many of my ancestors' stories. There's nothing wrong with your standard immigrant tale. At the same time, I would never identify my ancestors as political exiles or refugees. Of course, most of them were trying to escape increasingly tyrannical and discriminatory governments, but the vast majority's primary motivations seem to have been economic.

My take? Beware of politicians selling personal narratives as a way to appeal to a broader constituency-- their primary goal is not simply to tell a story but to make a connection, which also means that they may not care that much about the details. Rubio has clearly used the narrative of his parents being political exiles as a foundation-stone for his political identity, despite the fact that they were not. The fact that he's claiming this changes "nothing" only reinforces how he's much more concerned with protecting the image he was able to develop based on that story than the actual family history he pretends has shaped him so significantly. Not only is this a case of a politician not respecting his audience, but sadly also an instance of someone exploiting their family history in bad faith.

I can relate. Aunt Bozette has invented more than a few off-kilter theories about our family over the years, usually with precisely zero evidence. Among the best ones were that since one of her grandmothers was Hungarian, clearly her grandfather had to also have been Hungarian, and that this must have been how they met. Never mind that I had documents going back one hundred years showing that his family had been living in Czestochowa and that he and all his siblings had been born there, too. Aunt Bozette was "convinced," because, among other things, she clearly thought being Hungarian was sexier than being Polish. When I clearly wasn't budging, she accused the records of being unreliable because they spelled the family name differently than the American relatives did. (When I pointed out that name spellings varied in Poland, that many Jews of that period could not read Polish, and that members of our own family had been illiterate, she went into an e-rage, sputtering that we had "always" been very educated-- and offered, as proof, that her father and uncle had both gotten degrees from NYU.)

The reverse has also happened: there have been several occaisons when long-standing family stories have wound up being not exactly true. When this came up, my reaction was not defensiveness or anger, but excitement-- now we could find out the real story! There's nothing wrong with correcting the record or amending the stories. (Was I disappointed when I found out that great-great-uncle Nathan wasn't shell-shocked in World War One? Sure-- but then I got to find out about his actual record as a Marine stationed in Cuba during the Banana Wars.) There's also nothing wrong with qualifying the stories as stories-- which exist in their own right as a family commentary or gloss on the actual events. It's not "bad," they're just different kinds of data. Where you get into trouble is when you start giving the stories preference over the available, documented, evidence, because you think the truth isn't as interesting, scandalous, or beneficial to the greater narrative you want to tell. That's when you cross the line into being dishonest and verging on sleazy.

It's not necessarily Rubio's fault that, absent hard facts, that he made some embellishments (or repeated the embellishments of others)-- though given that he clearly was interested in his family history, I find it strange that he never bothered to ask for an actual date-- but everything he does as a response to it is all on him. So far, I'm unimpressed.

Being a Good/Serious Jew... with a non-Jewish Spouse

Longtime Failed Messiah commenter Dave asked an interesting question:

I am divorced, no kids, 53 years old. I was married briefly in 2004 to a beautiful Jewish girl, who turned out to be a paranoid schizophrenic. Both she and her family hid this "nugget of information" from me.  

I am now becoming more religious/ observant, partly to console myself for probably never having kids. I am attending an Orthodox synagogue.  

I am hoping to marry a Chinese girl. In my opinion, they are way more beautiful than Caucasian women. Just my opinion.  

I do not expect to be able to meet any woman, Jewish or Chinese or whatever, who is interested in either having a child with me, or adopting a child with me. 

I am certainly hoping that my future wife, if not Jewish, will become Jewish. I will certainly try to gently persuade her. 

I have a theoretical question- if (SADLY) for whatever reason a Jew or Jewess marries a goya/ goy knowing IN ADVANCE that (SADLY) there is no question of having kids with them- does it make a difference to the tzibbur whether or not the goya/ goy converts to Judaism, given the fact that there are not going to be any kids from that marriage?? 

When I asked for clarification, he added this:

I am asking 

1) what is your personal opinion about my marrying a woman who is non-Jewish and may never convert, GIVEN THAT (SADLY) there will be no children in the marriage, (SINCE I cannot find a woman who wants to marry me who wants to have or adopt children with me)??

2) what do you think is the view of Orthodox Judaism (Modern Orthodoxy, not Haredi nor Chassidic) about my marrying a woman who is non-Jewish and may never convert, GIVEN THAT (SADLY) there will be no children in the marriage, (SINCE I cannot find a woman who wants to marry me who wants to have or adopt children with me) ??

He threw it out to all us schmucks and schmuckettes who hang around FM all day, and by the time I finished writing back to him I realized that it had become a blog post unto itself. Hence, me throwing it up here.

Dear Dave:

As regards most things with personal practice, my opinion is that if it's not a big deal to you, it's not a big deal. While there may be some halachic issues with having a "mixed" marriage, my impression is that, for the most part, it is possible to be a practicing or observant Jew (particularly if no spawn are involved) without your partner being Jewish, too. What is necessary, to borrow from Dan Savage, is that your partner be "game." They need to at least be ok with what you're doing-- and, ideally, be willing to go along and play at least some role with you (particularly if you are fairly religious and want to keep that standard up in your household once married or living together).

While I don't think it's ethical to demand a partner convert, I think it is reasonable to communicate what your priorities and values are from the beginning-- just as, no doubt, they will be.  I'd be very clear with prospective partners that you want to have a Jewish household-- however you define it.  Presumably if you're committed enough to each other to get married, any potential partners will at least be willing to accomodate you, if not be actively interested in participating themselves in various ways.

My practice is not all that halachic, but since you mentioned you lean Orthodox, I think you may want to examine some of the nitty gritty issues of your personal practice and values, particularly how some of it might need to change or adapt if you had a non-Jewish partner. (Are there particular mitzvot you wouldn't be able to do that you want to? Are there potential work-arounds?)

I also think it's helpful to establish an intellectual framework in terms of what mental status you would want to use for your wife-- is she a giyoret-in-process? Is she a straight-up gentile? Is she a full-blown Jew except for the paperwork? That will help you figure out what lines of thinking you want to use in your personal practice in cases which involve your wife. For instance, would you want your wife to observe Shabbat with you, or would you want her to still be able to perform forbidden work? Would you want her to light candles, or would you? In our case, I treat my wife as if she were fully Jewish and invite her to do whatever Jewish stuff as she wants. The only "status" difference between us is not over halacha, but knowledge-- and these days, there are a few areas where she's more knowledgable than me.

Our model is definitely more participatory than obligatory, but it works for us. In the early days when we were dating there was a lot of explaining, lots of questions, lots of re-explaining, and lots of me asking my friends (and the internet) additional questions. Now, my wife reads books on Jewish sociology, follows Orthodox blogs, is slowly studying Hebrew with me, and so on. The point I'm trying to make is not that you need to search out someone that's going to be a rabba-in-training, but rather that it's better if your spouse has an interest in what you're doing, or at least isn't hostile to it.

Obviously, some of these issues may be is far off, but it's a useful exercise nonetheless. I think the biggest decision you need to make is-- will YOU care if your wife isn't Jewish? If not, then you should think about why not, and also start considering how you might integrate those ideas and conclusions into your practice-- either now, or when you find who you're looking for.

Over the six years we've been together, my wife has shul-hopped and davenned with me, celebrated Shabbat with me, fasted on Yom Kippur with me, lit menorahs with me, helped me lead seders, hang mezuzot, studied chumash and commentaries with me, and most importantly, explained and defended our eclectic practice to her Christian relatives (as well as to my secular ones who accused me of brainwashing her). She has even been experimenting with covering her hair since we got married (totally unprompted by me, for the record).

I would much rather have an engaged partner who is interested in participating in Judaism than a partner with "the right" status who could care less.

Just my POV. Feel free to comment or email me if you'd like to chat more.

Readers, what say thee? I realize I have kind of copped out on what Modern Orthodoxy might have to say about this (though, given that I'm not MO and don't really hang out with MOs, I feel that anything I could say would only be a random guess). Feel free to leave comments for me or Dave.

Those Who Should Know Better

Nazi comparisons have always bugged me. Since the time I started researching my family and found dozens upon dozens of names of the dead and missing, I intuitively understood that to compare someone to a Nazi was to abandon any pretense of intellectual consideration in exchange for scoring a cheap emotional shot. In my experience, when people invoke Nazism and the Holocaust to comment on modern issues (with the exception of those actually involving genocide), they almost always do so in a way that cheapens past events (and victims) as well as the contemporary ones they are trying to bring attention to.

I am used to seeing this kind of non-thought from a whole swath of people. I saw it from young liberals in High School and college during the Bush years. I see it often from conservatives in media punditry today. But, while I found that kind of rhetoric frustrating, upsetting and even disturbing, there was a part of me that also understood the mentality behind it-- simply put, these people usually had very little knowledge about the Holocaust or Nazism, and so for them it was an almost entirely rhetorical concept. Someone was bad, the Nazis were bad, therefore the guy that cut you off, the mall cop giving you a hard time, the politician you disagreed with-- they were all Nazis. Simple. It was stupid and enraging, but marginally understandable.

However there is one particular group that I never expected to hear violating Godwin's Law. That would be Holocaust survivors themselves.

There is a story making very small circles in the Jblogosphere. It is written by Ynet, which is known for having a pretty solid anti-religious bias, so I am aware that there may be some exaggeration or misinformation in it. However if the thrust of the article is in any way accurate, it reflects a troubling low point in Jewish discourse.

According to the article, Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau, who lost much of his family to the Nazis and spent his childhood as the youngest inmate in Buchenwald, said the following, to a group of high school students, no less:

"Marrying gentiles is like playing into the hands of the Nazis," Yad Vashem Council Chairman and former Chief Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau has been quoted as saying to students from Ramat Gan's Ohel Shem High School. According to the students, the rabbi made the remark during a lecture on the Holocaust and on his personal memories as a survivor of the Buchenwald concentration camp which he delivered to teenagers who had returned from a trip to Poland. Lau's remark and the nature of his lecture caused several 12th graders to walk out of the auditorium during the lecture, the students said. One of the teens who left the room explained, "As far as I understood, the lecture's point was that marrying non-Jews is forbidden, and according to Rabbi Lau, marrying gentiles is 'playing into the hands of the Nazis.'

I think it's important to stop here and think about this. The Nazis murdered most of R. Lau's family. Not "theoretically" murdered, not "spiritually" murdered. Murdered, murdered. I understand how intermarriage, particularly the sort that was extremely popular a generation ago when the Jewish partner usually wound up raising their children Christian, if not converting themselves, can be seen as troubling, if not downright painful to Jews from religious backgrounds. But as someone who actually suffered under the Nazis, it frankly boggles the mind how an intelligent person like Lau could actually make this comparison in any serious way, much less repeat it to young students. It also reflects an extremely binary viewpoint, which is also quite surprising coming from Lau, who historically has tended to bring a fair bit of nuance to his public speaking. To compare intermarriage to the Holocaust, or suggest that it is some sort of Nazi-esque tactic, ignores the fact that intermarriage exists in a very long continuum, all the way from raising children with no Jewish content or identity whatsoever, all the way to, well, this lady:

I run into you over and over at many of the parallel events of our lives, pick-up times of our school-aged children, brisen, chasunas, Shabbos lunches.  Baruch Hashem, Baruch Hashem. You have heard it by now from your friends, children’s teachers, rabbis, rooftops. My husband is not Jewish. We have been married eleven years. Our kids attend an Orthodox day school; we maintain a kosher home and we keep Shabbos.  I make kiddush in our house, one day my oldest son might take over.  Or not.  Not your typical intermarried family with the predictable outcome of a forbidden union but it makes you uncomfortable all the same.  I failed the ultimate test.

By every standard of logic, attitudes like the one allegedly shared by Lau (I have too much respect for him to accept this as fact without a little more confirmation) consistently fail. On a moral level, people who intermarry are certainly not comparable to Nazis. They are individuals who love each other and their children and, presumably, try to raise them as well as they know how. On the issue of Jewish continuity and education, intermarried families, again, run the gamut. While some parents may decide not to educate their children about their (partial) heritage, others do-- sending their kids to Hebrew school, to Jewish camp, to day schools, volunteering at their shuls, sitting on boards, donating time and money, etc. And, for that matter, there are in-married Jewish couples who do none of those things-- and yet they are not accused of "playing into the hands of the Nazis," though doing nothing does just as much to further assimilation along.

The only area where R. Lau is partially correct is regarding the issue of whether intermarried couples are making babies with halakhic status. Obviously, in a case where the mother is not Jewish or has not converted, according to Orthodox halakha (AOH), the child is not Jewish by Orthodox standards. However, focusing on this single issue ignores two important caveats:

1- The fact that someone is born not Jewish (AOH) does not mean they may not at some point decide to become Jewish (AOH). I'm obviously biased but I would assume that I would be much more inclined to consider converting to a religion or formally joining a community where I had been welcomed, not insulted, deemed defective, or, of course, been accused of being the offspring of an evil Nazi-esque tactic.

2- Not being born (or not "turning out" a certain way) is not the same thing as actively being killed. It sounds obvious but there you go. I understand that in traditional Judaism this issue is sometimes muddied (hence the controversiality of birth control, among other things), but, really, let's be clear on this. The fact that one has a non-Jewish (AOH) child is not remotely the same as having a Jewish child who is then killed. One is a tragedy, an unspeakable crime, a horrendous trauma that will permeate and affect the rest of your life. While the other may not be some people's ideal for themselves or their family, it is profoundly NOT the same thing as having a child being murdered. A child is a wonderful blessing. They are filled with endless potential. They can be or accomplish amazing things, they can be kind and wonderful human beings. They may even, shock of shocks, do things that help or positively impact Jews without being one! (Say, a doctor, or a teacher, or a police officer, or a politician, or anything else under the sun!) When people say things like "If my child turned out to be gay/not Jewish/not religious, it would be like they were dead," what they really mean is that either they're incredibly narrow-minded, or that they're just not thinking.

If people really want to test this analogy, have them go talk to Leiby Kletsky's parents. These people actually had their son violently murdered. They have actually lived through the hell that this causes. Do you think they would consider a living, breathing Leiby with questionable halakhic status to be no different from the mutilated body they buried a few months ago? Do you think they wouldn't trade one for the other in a heartbeat?

A disturbing analogy? I agree. But anyone who doesn't realize that this kind of insane-- and incorrect-- logic is ultimately where the "assimilation/intermarriage = Holocaust" analogy leads needs to start paying attention.

As someone who saw children (and teenagers, and adults, and elders) be murdered, really murdered, by sadistic, evil monsters, I can only hope that R. Lau is too wise-- and sensitive-- to have really said this. (Though the fact that his office admits that he mentioned intermarriage and "generations of Israel's enemies" makes me concerned that something similar may have been said.)


Hat-tip: Failed Messiah.

Caution: Blowhards at work

I present a befuddlement in three acts:

Act One- A "post" from Shmuley Boteach's blog pops up in my news feed. I use the term loosely, because rather than his usual lazy pattern of just reposting his op-ed columns, this time Shmuley opted to plug a book signing at a Barnes and Noble where he will be whoring his latest book and reminding everyone how great he is (in three weeks, no less, just in case you wanted to put it on your calendar). I notice that in said book signing plug Shmuley chose to call himself "America's Rabbi."

Act Two- I rage at Mrs. Yid for a good minute about what kind of arrogant doofus has the chutzpah to call himself "America's Rabbi"-- because like Highlander, there can be only one-- and that someone should really find some way to legally prohibit him from doing this anymore.

Act Three- I get a tingling sensation in the "idiocy storage" center of my brain. I wonder where I've heard such an egocentric, grandiose title used before. I do a little poking around my bookmarks and find this guy-- John Hagee's pet Jew, Aryeh Spero, who calls himself, what else, "America's Rabbi."

Epilogue: I cross my fingers that Shmuley and Spero hear about each other and decide to solve their copyright dispute in one of two ways: A, a giant lawsuit that exposes both to be giant gasbags to the public and financially compromises them so they can't spend as much of their resources being bozos, or B, they challenge each other to a charity Krav Maga match (or for those purists of you out there, Abir).

Hey, I wonder if one of them can pass for Sephardic. Then we could follow Israel's example and have two Chief American Rabbis. To the victor goes the silly turban!

Rejoice, O Readers

Enjoy a new post over at yon other blog. Verily.

Spoilers: The High Holidays happened. We observed them. It totally did not suck. It turns out knowing what's going on makes a big difference. Who knew?

Baby Steps toward Shabbat

Mrs. Yid and I are, if not "huge" comic nerds, then at least seasoned readers. Our college was lucky enough to have a long-established comic book reading room and we both spent many pleasant hours there reading whatever caught our fancy (in fact I think one of our first awkward conversations happened there. If memory serves I was attempting to ask her what she was going to be doing over the summer. Not surprisingly, she was more interested in reading her book). In the five years post-college, we've diligently acquired a small collection of favorites that proudly adorn two large shelves on our biggest bookcase (titles upon request).

The reason I bring this up is that while comics often give me food for thought, rarely do they inspire me towards an act of religious observance.

Mrs. Yid recently bought and started re-reading Transmetropolitan, an excellently-written series about a foul-mouthed reporter named Spider Jerusalem living in a semi-distant future that's, well, it sure ain't Star Trek, for starters. While the future has technological wonders ranging from matter synthesizers to clones to androids to amazing medicine, the City, where Jerusalem lives (a dig at the fact that every large city thinks it's the only city in the country) is for the most part a teeming mass of greed, filth, and sleaze. Despite having brilliant technology, the bulk of people's time seems to still be focused on the same old issues of violence, drugs, sex, and mindless TV. (It really is a great read, although I'd classify the language and themes as NSFShul.)

One thing I had been thinking of the last week while thumbing through Transmet is that while Warren Ellis' future is clearly exaggerated for effect, in the 15 years since he originally started the series, we have continued to have incredible leaps forward in technology. We may not have machines that give you food out of thin air or surgical procedures to transfer someone's consciousness into a cloud of nanites (read the books!) but in terms of where technology is and where it's going, it's clear that we're whizzing right along. One area where this is readily apparent is in the sphere of entertainment. It is possible to be completely plugged in 24/7-- and while there's nothing inherently wrong with that, for me, anyway, the fact that technology makes so much media available also means that I need to make sure that I'm making some active choices about what I will and won't spend my time on.

This is part of the reason why though Abbot and Deacon Yid have been nudging me to get a smart phone (they ordered theirs last week), I keep resisting. I have structured my life in a way where I don't particularly require a smart phone. My commute is a 25-minute walk each way. My job requires me to be "on" for 8 hours a day with three 20-minute breaks. Once I'm home, I have access to the internet if I need it. That's it. That's my day. There's almost no down time, which can be a little tiring, but it also means I don't really spend any time sitting around "bored" and needing to be entertained by a smart phone. And really, I rather like that.

Here's where things segue into Shabbat.

Shortly before Rosh Hashanah, Mrs. Yid and I decided it was time to finally start actually doing some text study together. So we ordered some bibles. Or rather, in our typical overly-academic way, we ordered six bibles. For the past two Friday nights, after dinner and candles and kiddush, we have sat down with our six bibles, and we've studied the weekly parsha. It's interesting, it's stimulating, and it's fun. Last week we went for three hours.

So we've got the very early germinations of some text study, and that's good. But we've been discussing another piece, still in its embryonic stage. Namely, how should liberal Jews treat Shabbat as a day of rest?

One piece we discussed was the halacha. We don't really hold by halacha, but it's always good to have the background. A really important element that came up was the fact that in order to not have to cook on Shabbat, you have to have a significant amount of preparation beforehand-- which, while following the letter of the law, struck us as being a little odd-- work a ton on Thursday and Friday because you're not allowed to work on Shabbat. Not exactly restful. So we decided that "no fire or electricity" is not going to be our main focus, because that would inherently create more work, not less.

However, we were intrigued by the concept of making Shabbat special and distinct. I had recently read a HuffPo article advocating an electronic "day of rest." (I was actually surprised by how much backlash it generated.) As we discussed it further, we discovered that the idea of limiting electronic entertainment on Shabbat was actually somewhat appealing. I tried it on Rosh Hashanah afternoon after shul, and while it was a bit of a temptation, I also  enjoyed spending some time doing non-screen related activities. So I think we're going to try this for a while-- no TV, no computers, basically no glowy-boxes. And we'll see where it goes.

I like the idea of carving some time out for human-to-human contact. I like making a space for slowing things down-- maybe not to the point of Heschel's Cathedral in Time, but at least a bit of a change from 24/7 infotainment explosion. I like the idea of spending time with my wife or friends and keeping my focus on them. And I think Mrs. Yid and I both like the idea of starting something that we can continue to develop when we have spawn running around.

There are plenty of things we are going to keep in place as is. Unfortunately, at this stage given our scheduling differences, it isn't quite possible to rule out running random errands on Saturdays, so in that respect it still will involve a certain degree of "work." We also won't be turning off our (non-smart) phones. Being able to stay in touch with people in case of an emergency is important, and given time zone differences, it would be impractical to demand that Mrs. Yid's parents only call us on Sundays. Rather than a firm ban on phones, I think we'll just try to limit phone use to what's necessary-- most likely, answering calls from friends or relatives. I also won't rule out leisure activities that might involve a TV-- say, getting together with friends to see a movie. We're not interested in having this become a barrier to spending time with people that are important to us. This is supposed to be about helping us be more thoughtful and present, not blowing people off.

After thinking it through, I've decided I'm not that interested in having an Orthodox-style Shabbat, strictly speaking. But I also think that unplugging your brain once a week is probably a good thing.

Here's to a more mindful future.

Quote-time:

Mrs. Yid: "You were reading Transmetropolitan and it made you think about observing Shabbat?"

Me: "Yes."

Mrs. Yid: "I don't think anyone's ever said that. Ever."

Questionable Logic

Tzvi's got a lot of issues. There's his "Diaspora equals spiritual death" issue, his "everything is about masturbation" issue, and of course his "I shouldn't be left unsupervised with young people" issue.

But it turns out that all these pale in comparison to Tzvi's latest issue: Not knowing what to do in the bathroom.

During the short afternoon break in our Yom Kippur prayers, I went to the bathroom, but my head was so filled with thoughts of G-d, I didn’t know what to do. You can’t think about G-d in the bathroom. So I tried to think about work, but I didn’t want to think about work on Yom Kippur and Shabbat, so I had a sudden flash to think about something unholy like baseball. But my mind went blank. I don’t know anything about baseball anymore, thank G-d.

Um, really? Your personality has become so utterly anemic since becoming frum that the only things you can recall in that large, bearded, uber-creative brain of yours are about God? Wow, I really can't wait to read that book of yours now.


Tzvi sees his sports ignorance as a fantastic badge of honor indicating how awesome a BT he has become:

I used to love baseball as a normal American sports fan, and I still remember names like Mickey Mantle, Hank Aaron, Ted Williams, Warren Spahn, Willy Mays, Duke Snider, SANDY KOUFAX, Yogi Berra, Pee Wee Reese, and Jackie Robinson, but since I became a baal t’shuva and moved to Israel, I don’t follow American sports at all. Zero. Not the World Series, and not the Super Bowl. I couldn’t care less. It’s all a waste of time. We have a Jewish country to rebuild, and millions of Jews to re-educate – who has time for stupid nonsense like American sports? Exercise is a mitzvah, and kids should be encouraged to engage in sports, but following baseball players and Major League standings of the goyim – why pollute our holy Jewish minds and waste precious time?

Hey Tzvi, before your arm shrivels up and dies from patting yourself on the back so much, you may want to consider these points:

1- My grandfather became a BT when he was in his sixties. Up until that time he was a fairly middle-of-the-road Conservative Jew. He grew up in the home of secular, Yiddish-speaking Communists.

2- From his earliest memories to the day he died, Zayde never gave two craps about sports.

3- Abbot Yid inherited his father's utter disinterest of sports.

4- Abbot Yid has yet to experience his "Road to Jerusalem" moment.

5- I also don't care about sports, and all this without making aliyah, becoming a B'aal Teshuvah, or spending so much time on my digital high horse that I suffer altitude poisoning.

Just saying.

... Honestly, this reminds me of the time Tzvi told the internet how proud he was that his kids were totally ignorant about world history. Um, go you?

But wait, there's more. Tzvi's got a double-whammy for us today. Continuing his long-running "Make aliyah or you're a jerk" theme, Tzvi has decided to write an inspiring ode about a great rabbi, a tribute to a towering Hasidic master, a man who recognized the importance of aliyah and whose life we can all use as a powerful role model to inspire us to follow in his footsteps:

The famous Hasidic master, Rabbi Nachman of Breslov, teaches that true prayer and faith is only possible in Eretz Yisrael. He states, “To be a true member of the Jewish People is to always move to higher and higher levels, and this is impossible without the holiness of Eretz Yisrael. The same is true of prayer. The ascent of prayer comes about on the Land of Israel." 

...Rabbi Nachman writes that only when a Jew attains the level of Eretz Yisrael, is he worthy of being called “a man of strength and valor.” Only when he has gone through this battle successfully, rising to the heights of holiness, and triumphing over all the obstacles that are set in his way, can he be called “a hero of war.”

Um, wait a minute. You're using Rebbe Nachman? Rebbe Nachman of Breslov? The guy who moved to Israel, spent a whopping six months there (according to one Breslov story, he said was ready to leave as soon as he set foot on Israeli soil), and promptly left to go back to the Diaspora? Who established his court in that special part of Northern Israel called Ukraine, and who stipulated in his will that he hated the exile so very much that he wanted his followers to come visit him there every year?

Unless we're supposed to see this as the best example ever of "Do as I say, not as I do," I don't get it.

Fun Moments in Hyperbole- Rosh Hashanah Edition

Ah, the High Holidays. That special time where professional Jewish pundits come together and make comparisons that show they have no idea what they're talking about:

- Shmuley Boteach: Deficits in America's economy, culture, and politics make us a bunch of zombies, or possibly vampires.

In this coming year let us be a nation of innovation, creativity, and imagination, as Henry David Thoreau said, one that ‘suck[s] out all the marrow of life,’ rather than a nation of the undead that sucks the last few drops of blood out of an exhausted and burned out economy.

Yes, that's Shmuley Boteach, self-appointed Chief Rabbi of the United States and who apparently can't tell the difference between Rosh Hashanah and Halloween.

- Avi Shafran: Doing teshuva is like "having a time machine."

An act of eating of non-kosher meat years ago can be “accessed and edited” into the equivalent of consuming matzah on Pesach. We can travel back in time and change the past.

In related news, Dreamworks has tapped R. Shafran to write the screenplay for their new movie, Time Machine 2: In 3-D. Under Avi's talented pen, I'm sure we can expect that one to be just as brilliant and entertaining as its predecessor.

Let's all give him a hand... or at least a finger

Am I the only one unimpressed by this story?

Just two weeks ago, former New York Mayor Ed Koch was telling city voters to elect a Republican to Congress, to "send a huge message to President Obama that we're not happy with how he's dealing with Israel." 

Now, one speech to the United Nations and a one-on-one chat later, Koch is an enthusiastic backer of the same president's reelection. 

The one-time Democrat tells his supporters that it's all water under the Ed Koch Queensborough Bridge. 

"I'm now on board the Obama Reelection Express," he says in an email to supporters. 

Bob Turner, elected on Sept. 13 to fill the seat once held by Democratic Anthony Weiner, had made an issue in his campaign of Obama's position that Israel's borders before the 1967 Mideast war should be the baseline for peace talks, leaving unmentioned the caveat that there should be mutually agreed land swaps that would take into account the new realities on the ground. 

That earned the endorsement of Koch, who in a recorded phone message to voters in the Jewish-heavy district said that signaling dissatisfaction with Obama's position was the "most important" reason to back Turner. 

Koch now says he thinks Turner's win had the desired effect, pushing the U.S. to come out against a vote for Palestinian statehood at the United Nations and to return to direct negotiations with Israel. 

In a subsequent interview with the New York Times, Koch says that "whatever rift existed before -- and there was one -- that's gone," and that he's ready to convince Jewish voters that Obama's the best candidate. 

"His speech at the U.N. in support of Israel was extraordinary. I couldn't have made a better one myself," he told WNBC-TV in New York. "I have shoes and will travel to Florida or any place they want to go."

Shorter version: Ed Koch is a flip-flopping hack.

It was bad enough that he pushed the idea that the 9th district election should be a "referendum" on Obama's Middle East policies, but now one good speech later and he's trying to sell himself as in Obama's corner again? Do us all a favor and just stay out of it, Ed.

Seriously, I know it's become a supposedly great badge of honor when a person sticks to their principles and is willing to work with people from both parties to advance those principles, but every time I hear about Ed Koch it sounds like he's screwing someone over. I don't think people should be slaves to political parties, but if you're going to have a political change of heart and become a neocon, do it like Reagan or Perry did and stick to your guns. Actually become a Republican or ideological conservative-- don't pull this pseudo-independent, wishy-washy, "I campaigned against you a mere three weeks ago, but now I've totally got your back" crap. Why should anyone trust a word that comes out of his mouth, Democrats or Republicans?

Honestly, if Ed Koch's opinion still carries weight with any voters, Jewish or otherwise, it's just more proof that some people shouldn't be allowed to vote.

The Joys of Recycling

We've talked about Lazer recycling his posts before, most notably in 2009 when he wrote a post called "Hashem's Signature," which it turned out was a word-for-word repeat of something he had written back in 2005 under the name "The Creator's Autograph."

Well, whether due to High Holiday busy-ness or just general laziness on the Emunah Rebbe's part, he's done it again. Remember his 2008 post about not ignoring dents? In which Lazer counseled a young woman named Suzanne that the reason she kept getting into minor car accidents was that she wasn't covering her hair?

Well either Lazer's run out of ideas or Suzanne has a creepy identical twin sister who suffers the same tznius problems as she does (and drives the same car), because a scant three years later, we get to read about the exact same story, only this time, the lady's name is Ricki.

Interestingly, if you try to find the original "Don't Ignore the Dent" story from 2008, it is now unavailable via Lazer's blog. Thanks to the almighty power of Google-caching, however, we can see that it was still there as recently as last August, shining in all its now-plagiarized glory.

Seriously, the only things changed are the woman's name and the date she's writing to him. (Apparently October 30, 2008 doesn't have the same poignant ring as September 11, 2011. Classy, Lazer.)

I wouldn't mind if Lazer just rehashed a post about why tznius is important (setting aside the ridiculous magical thinking of dissecting a complete stranger's letter about how she's a bad driver to guess at random personality failings), but I don't understand why he rips off his own writing and presents it as totally new material, without even bothering to change the title!

When this happened with Creator's Autograph, I didn't really care. It was silly, but that was about it. This is a little more serious, though, because this post is purporting to be a real letter from a real reader asking for help and advice-- and clearly, it's been fabricated. There is no way this "Ricki" person could be for real. Not that I was taking anything Lazer says as gospel to begin with, but it's sad to be faced with the real possibility that some of the stuff he posts that people have "supposedly" written to him are made up. What's even sadder is that he thought no one would notice.

For a guy who claims to be trying to reach out to the whole world as his audience, Lazer sure doesn't think very highly of his readers.

How big of you

In keeping with my long tradition of being annoyed by silly Tzvi Fishman, I must announce a totally unsurprising update: he's at it again.

Tzvi starts off being pissy because only 35 Jews protested at the UN against a Palestinian state. He then uses this as a springboard to wax idiotic about how this demonstrates a complete lack of Jewish identity in the US. (Because we all know that Jewish identity is predicated on protesting at the UN. That's totally the 614th commandment- I don't care what that fancy-pants philosopher guy said.)

From there, we go deeper into the stupid pool. In case you're not convinced about the protesting-as-Jewish-litmus-test thing, fear not, Tzvi's got another test that's even more fool-ishproof.

 to spread the message of aliyah, I recently started to make friends on Facebook.  There, I discovered a very noteworthy thing. As everyone knows, Facebook lovers can write all about themselves and their interests on their “walls.” (How very different that wall is from ours.) There, they can tell all of their friends about their favorite books and movies and television shows, music and philosophy. Now here is the interesting thing. All of my new Facebook friends tend to be avid supporters of Israel and obviously proud to be Jews. They post all kinds of news stories, and blogs, and Youtube clips about Israel with great devotion and passion. But by and large, when you glance at their preferences in movies and music and books, they like all of the American garbage that the goyim love – the stupid celebrities and rock stars, and idiot TV shows, and sci-fi movies, and trash thrillers – all kinds of names, and groups, and books, and movies that I’ve never heard of, thank G-d.

Oh my God, he's right! How dare Jews enjoy things? Our holy ancestors didn't have any fun and look how great they turned out. Why do you think they invented things like gefilte fish and Slivovitz? To make them extra-dour, of course. And don't think the ban on fun is just in Israel. American Jews are doing their best to quash it here in the states, too. When it comes to working hard to not enjoy themselves, the couple from American Gothic has nothing on us.

But hang on, it gets better. After crapping all over US Jews for having the temerity to like TV, movies, and crappy books, Tzvi's next column announced that he was offering a fantastic prize to his millionth reader (not that he cares about silly worldly matters like popularity or anything). Can you guess what it is?

I am pleased to announce that the prize will be a copy of what may be the greatest Jewish novel ever written, “Tevye in the Promised Land,” for which I won the Israel Ministry of Education Award for Creativity and Jewish Culture.

That's right, pathetic Diaspora exiles, make sure to burn all the crap you actually like, because if you're lucky enough, you just might get a free copy of Tzvi's kick-ass book. (Just thinking about leafing through its pages makes me go all squishy inside.)

Forget "Hollywood to the Holy Land." In honor of his millionth hit, I think Tzvi should change his blog name to better reflect his message. How about "Great Balls of Chutzpah?"

Are we talking about the same place?

Jonathan Rosenblum wrote an article encouraging the mayor of Bet Shemesh to confront the Haredi wingnuts that keep attacking students at a Modern Orthodox girls' school because it's too close to their turf and because the girls aren't dressed quite modestly enough for their tastes. As often happens, my issue with Rosenblum is not so much with his main point, but rather the way he goes about arguing it.

Case in point: to illustrate that Haredim can live by their principles of modesty but also avoid becoming major jerks, Rosenblum discusses the fine folks of Kiryat Sanz:  

Last week, I found myself davening Mincha in Kiryat Sanz in Netanya, prior to spending a few hours at the separate beach across the road. Kiryat Sanz is a largely self-contained neighborhood of Klausenberger Chassidim, though late Klausenberger Rebbe insisted from the beginning that there be a Sephardi community within Kiryat Sanz. Laniado Hospital, which the Rebbe built, lies at the edge of the neighborhood.

While in Kiryat Sanz, I noticed one or two women in decidedly non-Chassidic dress walking through the neighborhood. No one paid them any attention. Just to make sure that my powers of observation are not waning, I called a doctor friend who lives in the neighborhood, and he told me a story of rabbi who once spent his summer vacation in Kiryat Sanz. After a week, he complained to the Klausenberger Rebbe, of blessed memory, that he was shocked by the presence of immodestly dressed women in Kiryat Sanz. The Rebbe replied, “That’s amazing. I’ve been here over ten years, and I never saw anything like that.”

My friend then told me another story that captures the ahavas Yisrael that the Rebbe made the animating value of his community, along with devotion to Torah study. Once the Rebbe heard that some Chassidim had shouted, “Shabbes,” at seaside bathers. He ordered them to cease and desist forever. “Nobody ever came closer to Torah because someone shouted at them,” he said. “Open your windows and sing Shabbos zemiros at the top of your lungs. That might have a positive effect.”

Many Mazel Tovs to the Klausenberger Hasidim, who apparently follow their rebbe's approach in not sweating the small stuff.

However, it's a little unfortunate that shortly after reading about the tolerant and open-minded people of Kiryat Sanz that I happened to stumble across this piece over at FailedMessiah:

Sanz hasidim are forced submit their mail, the land line phones, their cell phones and computers to censorship that includes banning all computer games for children and having a rabbinic committee certify that all laptops have their Internet capability permently disabled.

Hmm... Well, as long as they're only harassing themselves, I guess we're still cool. Rock on, Klausenberg.

Working Towards a Thoughtful Judaism

As longtime readers know, I was raised without any formal Jewish education. When I was around twelve, my grandfather died and I felt a deep longing to want to know more about Zayde in particular, my family history in general, and, somewhat out of left field, the religion and culture that so many of them had practiced to varying degrees. Initially I think I just wanted to get a better sense of what my grandfather's values and life would have been like, and learning about Orthodox Judaism, and Hasidim in particular, seemed like a good place to start.

It was a tough start. While initially my parents were on board with my request to have a Bar Mitzvah, that tanked pretty quickly after Abbot Yid got into a fight with a rabbi of one of the big Reform shuls in town (since I was already learning a second language, Abbot wanted to see if there was any possibility of me working with a private tutor and/or skipping some of the nonessentials of Hebrew school leading up to the Bar Mitzvah. The rabbi got offended and said "We don't do quickie Bar Mitzvahs here," which promptly got Abbot Yid offended and led to him storming out and never going back). From there I was basically on my own. I didn't get very far for a while until eighth grade when we happened to read Potok's The Chosen and it was like a fire got lit underneath me. There was something about seeing religious Jews in literature that crystalized Judaism for me in a very dramatic way. I don't know if it was the surprise of realizing that people wrote novels about Jews or the thrill of getting to discuss Jewish history and minutae in class, but it gave me a huge charge. I read the book in three days, and while I've long since grown to appreciate most of Potok's other books as more interesting or better written than The Chosen, it will always have a special place in my heart as the text that sparked my Jewish identity-- an identity which previously had been barely existent.

I started reading whatever I could about Hasidim-- mostly things printed from the internet. In high school, I found the religion section of my school library and started reading books on Judaism. And I found a friend whose family was gracious enough to invite me to High Holidays, which was how I started my first ambivalent forays into participating in Jewish ritual instead of just reading about it.

Which is where this post comes in. In the past sixteen years I have had a lot of spiritual development, but I feel like there's lots of things I still don't know and have yet to really think about when it comes to forging a spiritual path that's both comfortable as well as intellectually consistent with the kind of Jew I'd like to be and the kind of Jewish life and family I'd like to have with Mrs. Yid.

Mrs. Yid and I have some big Jewish goals for the year, one of which is to get back on the Hebrew wagon and another of which is to start studying some Jewish texts and commentary so we start getting a more solid grounding in this big Jew game we supposedly want to play in. I also have another personal spiritual goal for the year, which is to start taking a serious look at the mitzvot and decide which ones speak to me, which ones don't, and which ones I'm interesting in trying out a little more so I can decide. (Similar to how Mrs. Yid has been wearing headscarves for the past 2 months since our wedding, though me being the super observant sleuth I am, I did not make this connection until someone complimented her on her tichel at shul.)

As anyone who knows me (or has been reading me for a while) knows, there are some pretty definite red lines we have already established, so I don't have any expectations that I will be fruming out or that Mrs. Yid will be prepping herself for an Orthodox Bet Din. But at the same time, it seems dishonest for me to talk about the silliness of adhering to unexamined dogma, or advocate the concept of personal choice and autonomy when I haven't bothered to investigate the issues enough to really be in a position to make a judgment about these things one way or the other.

Here's looking forward to a meaningful, thoughtful, and engaged year.

Shana Tova.

A perfect example of what not to do

Every year Mrs. Yid and I throw a seder for family and friends, in which the vast majority of participants are not Jewish. (We also have a Hanukkah party complete with menorah lighting and many, many fried foods.) As such I have a little background about how to make Jewish ritual accessible to a non-Jewish, or non-religious audience.

Which is exactly why this video pains me so very much.

I'm going to put aside the dicey politics of Chabad mixing Judaism and politics by roping random public officials into self-serving media events, as well as the interesting fact that the mucky-mucks orchestrating this particular Hanukkah photo-op decided to have it during the day. Instead let's talk about the participation dynamics featured here.

Rick Perry, the only non-Jew in the bunch, stands awkwardly in the middle of five Chabad rabbis, as they have him light the shamash candle. From there, the rabbis go into auto-pilot. One of them chants the blessings as Perry looks around and fidgets, having no idea where to look or what to do. Other than firing up the candle, he has zero role whatsoever. There is no translation for him to follow, no transliteration to allow him to participate, he doesn't even get a lousy yarmulke. Instead he gets to be a captive audience, watching the rabbis do their thing and looking somewhere between bored and uncomfortable, not sure whether to look at the rabbis chanting, the flame flickering, or the cameras. He clearly has no idea what's going on and any opportunity of having an actual spiritual connection between him and rabbis is totally gone. From there the rabbis start singing a song in Yiddish, again, something Perry can't do, with none of them even looking at him. He keeps trying to at least help with the chorus (bum, bum, bum-biddy-bum), but since no one has given him the slightest bit of prep ahead of time, he's lost there, too. Finally the rabbis drag Perry into a hora, something which he also seems to be totally unprepared for.

I think maybe the most painful part is when one of the rabbis tries to explain what just happened, giving Perry the most dumbed-down gist of the blessings and meaning of Hanukkah humanly possible. Not surprisingly, Perry procedes to stare at the menorah as if it were a mutant egg-sack from Mars.

I totally understand why some people are so skeptical of "open-source Judaism" advocates like Douglas Rushkoff and R. Niles Goldstein. But looking at this video, seeing a group of educated Jews who have an explicit goal to reach out to non-Jews as a way of building their brand and ostensibly broadening non-Jews' awareness of Orthodox Judaism all but ignore and shut out a non-Jew who seems like he would at least be willing to pretend to care about what's going on if they gave him half a chance and some basic information, I can't help but conclude that top-down Judaism doesn't have all the answers, either.

Granted, Rick Perry is not Jewish, so he is not exactly Chabad's target audience. But seeing his discomfort, seeing how the rabbis speed on ahead totally oblivious to the fact that he cannot-- and has not been invited to-- participate, I can't help but think about how many times this has happened to Jews, as well.

If you're going to spend all your time with people who share your background, culture and education, I suppose things like this don't matter. But if part of your life or mission involves spending time with and reaching out to people from different backgrounds than yourself, it might be a good idea to rethink your approach.

If your idea of "sharing Hanukkah" with someone is "letting them watch while you pray," I don't think most people will be back. No matter how good your doughnuts are.

Hat-tip to Jeffrey Goldberg at the Atlantic.

Letter to a Megalomaniac: Stop Writing Letters

Remember our old friend Ellis Washington? The guy who wrote a letter to his pastor complaining that he was being persecuted by not being allowed to debate him at church? The guy who compared environmentalists to jihadists, Nazis, and communists?

Well he's got more to talk about. And this time, he's preaching to the youth. As a young-ish adult myself, I personally can't wait. I bet this will be wicked rad.

What's the dilly, Ellis?

Letter to Generation X

Um... you know that no one in generation X actually refers to themselves as generation X, right? Off to a lame start, fogey.

Ellis' column is truly bizarre. It's probably the only time I've read a political commentary piece framed as a novelization, complete with prologue, "dialogue" and epilogue headers. In the prologue, Ellis informs us that he's had a "recent correspondence" with "a young protégée." Or, as someone who wasn't pretending they just stepped out of Dead Poet's Society or The Emperor's Club might put it, he sent an email. Way to stay current and hip, Ellis.

Things only get more ridiculous and flowery from there. Apparently Ellis' letter had "an enduring leitmotiv" (that's a theme, for those of us who don't spend our free time rubbing our diplomas in other people's faces) discussing the many stages of slavery that black Americans have suffered through-- including, in Ellis' view, the most recent one of "voluntary slavery."

All of this is just in Ellis' prologue. Bring on the "correspondence," young page!

The email is in response to one from a young black man named Marcus saying he doesn't like the Republican party because it keeps the rich rich and the poor poor, and because he doesn't want to be associated with all the baggage of the GOP so he'd rather be a moderate or independent. Sounds reasonable enough, but the great Ellis will not let things stand:

Thanks for writing me, my friend. … Read my blog and follow up what I write with your own research.

That's right, no correspondence from Ellis would be complete without a gratuitous self-endorsement (still, don't you think mentioning it in your second sentence is a little on the nose?)

To help you, examine this simple syllogism below from the own mouths of the forefathers of communism, a totalitarian, atheistic ideology responsible for the brutal genocide of perhaps 150-200 million people in the twentieth century alone: 

...Marx: Democracy is the road to socialism;
Lenin: Democracy is indispensable to socialism. The goal of socialism is communism;
Marx: The meaning of peace is the absence of opposition to socialism.

Um... I don't get it. Marx and Lenin are saying that in their views, democracy (power by the people) is required to get to an eventual communist state. So? Suggesting that this damns democracy is like saying John Wayne Gacy ruined clowns forever. Besides, as a conservative, isn't it an article of faith for you that Marx and Lenin were full of crap?

Ellis deftly slaps down Marcus' concern about GOP policy regarding poor people, not by referring to any actual facts or policies, but by simply saying that it's a lie. Well played, I guess? And then he brings out the big guns:

Remember the Democratic Party was the party that gave black people 250 years of slavery, followed by the murderous Klu Klux Klan, racial segregation (de jure and de facto), ghettos, endemic poverty, eugenics (selective breeding), forced sterilization and abortion on demand, which kills millions of black babies every year.

This is a silly if culturally interesting argument which is often repeated on the right, particularly among the Fox News bozos. I am personally fascinated by the intellectual position, "Actions then and now don't matter at all; all that matters is the name of the party they're associated with." It's got a certain ridiculous cleverness to it. Never mind that no matter how often people like Ellis repeat the canard about the contemporary Democratic party somehow being responsible for the KKK, there is nothing more profoundly conservative than the slavery, racism and Jim Crow that was endemic in the Old South. It's particularly funny given that the Fox crowd also likes to crow about how it was Republicans who signed the Civil Rights Act into law over opposition from Dixiecrats. Ellis, of course, can't add this to the list of the Democratic party's evils since he considers the Civil Rights Movement part of "voluntary slavery."

This particular letter ends with Ellis wondering (apparently to himself) whether Generation X will be the saviors of our nation:

Can Generation X save America from voluntary slavery, from the madness of Social Darwinism, which is education atheism, from unsustainable debt and deficits, exploding welfare programs and pensions plans that are purposely causing states to shut down and global socialism?

Tune in for our next episode and find out!

Oh wait, there's more! A few weeks later, we had "Letter to Generation Y," and I'm sure this one's even hipper than ever, right? (Not if the format is any indication; we get the same ridiculous prologue, dialogue, epilogue structure as last time. What is this, a play? Let me guess, Greek tragedy?)

This time Ellis is writing to... a middle-aged college professor? Oh, but apparently he's recycling some of the same arguments he used to "rescue" the guy's college freshman son who had fallen in with the wrong crowd. Go for it, Ellis, what's your advice?

The problem with this young generation is that they have no moral code nor intellectual foundation other than hedonism; no knowledge of history or war strategies of the past like those outlined in Sun Tzu's classic treatise "Art of War."

Wow. I can honestly say that of all the things you might blame young people for, this is definitely not how I thought this was going to go.

Perhaps you can have your son do what I ask my college students to do, which is to read my WND articles or my blog and type a 2-3 page summary and opinion essay of each work.

HOLY CRAP, Ellis. Not everything is about you saving everyone's mind from the evils of... everyone else. Please, for the love of God, dial your ego down a bit before it blocks out the sun and all the trees die. Also, you have some balls to complain about schools brainwashing kids when you require your college students to read your blog and write summaries of everything you post. What's next, have them study your grocery lists so they know how a great and disciplined man stays on budget? Maybe they should be examining your Kindergarten finger painting, too? I'm sure there's something useful there.

This intellectual project will achieve several objectives almost instantaneously for your son, namely to:
1-Regularly follow directions from an authority figure;
2-Develop critical thinking and writing skills;
3-Get his intellect, body, soul, spirit ready to re-enter college again and this time to be successful;
4-Improve his writing/typing/computer skills.

You know, it's funny, Ellis, this kid could accomplish any or all of these things without having to read a single thing you've written. If all he needs to do to get back in the college mindset, he could do book reports on the Twilight series or write reviews of Star Trek episodes and it would essentially get him to the exact same place. What is it about your psyche in which you're convinced you're the antidote to a disease no one seems to be suffering from?

Results: By the end of the summer Rashaan will have a folder full of essays on diverse subjects that your son can then take to the dean, university officials and his professors to demonstrate his seriousness to high intellectual pursuits.

Wait, so your plan is to have him write mini-essays based on your random ideas and screeds, and then collate them into a manifesto portfolio, and that's supposed to impress the dean and his professors enough to let him back into class? I mean, I guess there's some merit there, but why on earth would you suggest that he write nothing but responses to your essays? Isn't there some issue of intellectual property involved? What are the professors supposed to make of his response to that time you said your pastor was a jerk because he wouldn't read your books? And again, are you so self-important that you think the only good writing this kid could create would be in response to something you wrote?

My son, Stone Washington, is 14 and will be entering high school this fall. Since he was about 8 I've had him read the great works of literature and book summaries of the classics and write his own summary analyses of those works in addition to reading them to me, correcting his sentence structure, and most importantly making him defend his thesis and arguments.

Three thoughts:

1- You seem like the most overbearing and obnoxious parent in the world.
2- There are "great works" besides your own master oeuvre? Lies, I tell you! I won't believe it!
3- You named your kid Stone? Why, was "Awesome" already taken? What about "Genius?" Then again, given how self-absorbed you are, I'm surprised you didn't name him after your blog.

Ellis says his son just finished writing 100 essays from an anthology of great books (see #1). He says his son needed to know that he needed to have an informed opinion before anyone would take his opinion seriously. True, of course, though again it begs the question of why Ellis only assigns random troubled youth and his college students his stuff to read.

Ellis concludes with a heart-warming anecdote about young Stone:

To demonstrate how knowledge is power and character is destiny, a few months ago when Stone was in the eighth grade he was chosen to be part of a special writing group. When the essays were written and collected, the teacher (Ms. Currier) by chance chose Stone's essay to read to the entire class and was stunned at his level of clarity, sentence structure and intellectual depth. She stated his writing was at the level of a 20-year-old, a college junior. 

Overnight Stone's reputation for writing and intellectualism spread across the school campus, including to the principal's office. I told Stone in addition to the bad letters in his file for being repeatedly tardy and bullying that little boy ("Jimmy") in the seventh grade, now you have a good paper in your permanent file to showcase your literary and philosophical side. Stone was visibly proud of this achievement, which made my fighting with him all that time in writing those 100 essays (772 days) worth every word, every sentence … every effort.

Ellis, I think I speak for everyone under 30 when I say, truly, you are the least cool person I know. I'm sure you consider it a compliment.

What to make of this?

I was filling out a registration form for an upcoming teacher's conference that is focused on social justice and ethnic diversity. Among the questions was, "Ethnic Group/Race". One of the options was, "White/European/Jewish."

Given the classic Jewish penchant for education, it's interesting that there have only been a few teachers in the family tree: my maternal grandfather worked as a bursar at Brooklyn College and occasionally gave lectures in New York history (he was working on his phD when he died of a heart attack); a great-great-uncle taught night school to immigrants until he died in the 1919 flu epidemic, and a distant cousin whose parents left Poland for Cuba put his bilingualism to good use and taught high school Spanish for 30 years.

I know that the liberal Jew going into the trenches of public education to work with minority kids has become a recurring educational trope from the past 100 years, but given that I didn't go to public school and, AFAIK, never had Jewish teachers, it's a little weird for me to run into little nuggets like this that show me that,

1- There really are a lot of Jews in education, and,
2- As much as we may want to claim a minority status, to everyone else, we're still just white.

GOP Debate Reactions

I haven't had cable in almost a year, so my ability to watch live political theater is usually pretty limited. Last night I didn't have much to do, though, so I caught the debate through a live stream via politico. Here are my (belated) gut reactions, using combined transcripts from NBC and Roll Call.:

Ron Paul: Someone's senile paranoid grandfather has escaped from his spare room over the garage and thinks he's running for President. Quotes:

"With the airlines that are responsible for carrying their cargo and their passengers. I mean, why — why should we assume that a bureaucracy can do better? And look at the monstrosity we have at the airports. These TSA agents are abusive. Sometimes they’re accused of all kinds of sexual activities on the way they maul people at the airport."

So TSA should be abolished because its workers keep molesting people at airports. Wow, no poisoning the well here.

"We’re spending — believe it or not, this blew my mind when I read this — $20 billion a year for air conditioning in Afghanistan and Iraq in the tents over there and all the air conditioning. Cut that $20 billion out, bring in — take $10 off the debt, and put $10 into FEMA or whoever else needs it, child health care or whatever. But I’ll tell you what, if we did that and took the air conditioning out of the Green Zone, our troops would come home, and that would make me happy."

It's rare that a professional politician running for election makes a suggestion so totally divorced from any concept of reality or consequences. Ron Paul strikes me as the kind of guy who would watch The Little Mermaid and suggest that we should all just learn how to breathe underwater.

"I think this fence business is designed and may well be used against us and keep us in...And there's capital controls and there's people control. So, every time you think of fence keeping all those bad people out, think about those fences maybe being used against us, keeping us in."

Spoken like a man with a crazy newsletter, possibly hand-mimeographed.

Newt Gingrich: Football coach who thinks he's the quarterback. Not a good mix. Quotes:

"And if this president had any concern for working Americans, he’d walk in Thursday night and ask us to repeal [Obamacare] because it’s a monstrosity. Every person up here agrees with that."

How dare that bastard not ask us to repeal the legislation he spent most of his term fighting for and which our party keeps attacking via Congress and lawsuits? It must tell you he really hates Americans.

"We should make English the official language of government...We should insist that first-generation immigrants who come here learn American history in order to become citizens. We should also insist that American children learn American history. 

And then find a way to deal with folks who are already here, some of whom, frankly, have been here 25 years, are married with kids, live in our local neighborhood, go to our church."

Yeah, we can't deport the illegals we know... that's awkward! Those other guys, though, that's fair game.

Michele Bachmann: Comparable to someone who's already told everyone they're going to be in NASCAR and has ordered a celebration cake without bothering to learn to drive. Quotes:

"I was just last week down in Miami. I was visiting the Bay of Pigs Museum with Cuban-Americans. I was down at the Versailles Cafe. I met with a number of people, and it’s very interesting. The Hispanic-American community wants us to stop giving taxpayer- subsidized benefits to illegal aliens and benefits, and they want us to stop giving taxpayer-subsidized benefits to their children as well."

I like how when it comes to where she ate lunch, she'll give details down to the zip code, but when she starts discussing conversations which totally challenge the conventional wisdom of what the Hispanic community thinks about immigration and benefits, all we get is, "I met a guy." Way to bury the lead.

"But one thing that we do know, our immigration law worked beautifully back in the 1950s, up until the early 1960s, when people had to demonstrate that they had money in their pocket, they had no contagious diseases, they weren’t a felon. They had to agree to learn to speak the English language, they had to learn American history and the Constitution. And the one thing they had to promise is that they would not become a burden on the American taxpayer. That’s what we have to enforce."

Our immigration law worked "beautifully" until the 50s? Wow, how... WASPy of you. I'm going out on a limb and guessing you don't have a lot of Ellis Island connections in your family, Governor. Or, you know, that you don't read history books. One or the other. Incidentally, there's a huge difference between promising to do something (learn US history, for instance), and actually doing it. I say this as a descendant of immigrants-- some of who became Communists, and at least one of whom, yes, became a polygamist. Signing a piece of paper doesn't mean a thing.

Herman Cain: Desperate for someone to notice him, so he keeps squawking about business-themed solutions for everything. Unfortunately, most political issues cannot be solved by simply copying off Chile's playbook. Quote:

"I call it my 9-9-9 economic growth plan.Throw out the current tax code, a 9 percent tax on corporate income, our 9 percent tax on personal income and a 9 percent national sales tax. If 10 percent is good enough for God, 9 percent ought to be good enough for the federal government."

Yeah, let's pick random numbers out of a hat because they sound fun and alliterative and base government policy on them! Even better, let's pretend this makes sense by alluding to tithing. Way to sell the dream, sir. Still, I suppose 9-9-9 is better than 6-6-6-... unless, of course, someone turns your poster upside down. Be careful; this only has to happen once and you'll lose all the evangelicals.

Rick Santorum: Looked pained every time someone asked him a question. He doesn't really want this job, does he? Quote:

"I’ve done things. We’ve brought Democrat and Republicans together."

John Huntsman: Another guy that really, really, wants people to notice him, but has the unfortunate task of trying to make a reasonable, sane person seem exciting in a contest with a bunch of screaming chimps flinging their own poop at each other. It's also precious how he gets pissy at discussing homeland security and foreign policy because he prevents him from talking about jobs. Quote:

"we’ve spent about 15 minutes now on homeland security. The greatest gift we could give this country on the 10th year anniversary, Rick, is a Homeland Security Department... that doesn’t make us all feel like there’s a fortress security mentality that is not American... 

I’m guessing there are a whole lot of people tuned in around this country who are saying, why are we spending all this time talking about the smaller issues? We’ve got 14 million people unemployed. We’ve got millions more in this country who are so dispirited they’ve quit looking. This is a human tragedy that we’re talking about, moms and dads and families that completely go without. 

...While all these other issues are important, let’s not lose sight, folks, of the bottom line here. We’ve got to get back in the game as a country. We’ve got to make this economy work."

Mitt Romney: A vapid charmer. (He's welcome to use that as a campaign slogan, by the way. It's on the house.) If he was a little more cut-throat he might be able to get the charisma thing going, but as it is, he seems too nice, as in this quote where he had a great opportunity to slam his two biggest potential rivals, Perry and Obama, and winds up complimenting both of them:

"My guess is that Governor Perry would like to do it a different way second time through. ...we’ve each taken a mulligan or two. And — and my guess is that that’s something you’d probably do a little differently the second time. He just said he’d rather do it through legislation second time through... I think his heart was in the right place. 

Right now, we have people who on this stage care very deeply about this country. We love America. America is in crisis. We have some differences between us, but we agree that this president’s got to go. This president is a nice guy. He doesn’t have a clue how to get this country working again."

I have to say, I'm a little confused by this. Do Mormons just not know how to snipe at people? Is this another gap in the LDS educational system, along with evolution and archaelogy?

Rick Perry: Charismatic, even while saying crazy things. Kind of a scary combination. Reminds me quite a bit of George W. Bush with Josh Brolin's face (and I'm saying that as someone who never saw W.). I'm calling the nomination now-- I think Perry's it, with Romney as VP. It's going to be hilarious. Quotes:

you can secure the border, but it requires a commitment of the federal government of putting those boots on the ground, the aviation assets in the air. 

We think predator drones could be flown, that real-time information coming down to the local and the state and the federal law enforcement. And you can secure the border. And at that particular point in time, then you can have an intellectually appropriate discussion about immigration reform.

So, we can't have a conversation about immigration reform until we've got predator drones buzzing over Texas. Way to push that issue back a few decades.

"The idea that we would put Americans’ economy at — at — at jeopardy based on scientific theory that’s not settled yet, to me, is just — is nonsense. I mean, it — I mean — and I tell somebody, I said, just because you have a group of scientists that have stood up and said here is the fact, Galileo got outvoted for a spell. 

But the fact is, to put America’s economic future in jeopardy, asking us to cut back in areas that would have monstrous economic impact on this country is not good economics and I will suggest to you is not necessarily good science. Find out what the science truly is before you start putting the American economy in jeopardy."

So... you refuse to make any change in industry or business until we "find out what the science is"... while at the same time brushing aside scientific consensus on the grounds that scientists have been wrong about stuff before. Way to show some intellectual objectivity there, Governor. We can clearly tell you're just dying to get to the bottom of this great scientific mystery.

Also, double points for saying this while having recently made giant cuts to your education budget. Exactly where are we going to get these scientists to decide these questions? Or are you just betting on the fact that killing the planet will make you rich before it makes you dead?

Bonus- Brian Williams & John Harris: trying way too hard to play "gotcha" games. Sorry guys, it just makes you look like dipshits. Quotes:

"Tell us which one of these people are saying crazy or inane things." 

"You yourself have said the party is in danger of becoming anti- science. Who on this stage is anti-science?" 

"Just recently in New Hampshire, you said that weekly and even daily scientists are coming forward to question the idea that human activity is behind climate change. Which scientists have you found most credible on this subject?"

Guys, it stopped being cute after the first time. No one's going to answer, they don't even bother to respond or get flustered, so all you're doing is wasting time and looking like twits. That's supposed to be the candidates' job.