A Tzimmes in a Teapot

As a general rule, Jesus is not a particularly well-understood figure in Judaism. Since the topic dovetailed with my undergrad thesis, I spent lots of time examining Jewish attitudes towards Jesus in college-- ranging from the medieval polemic Toldot Yeshu, to philosophers like Profiat Duran, Jacob Emden and Moses Mendelssohn. I also looked at Enlightenment and Reform thinkers like Graetz, Geiger, Kohler, and the rabbis Wise (I.M. and Steven), as well as Yiddish modernists like Melech Ravitch, Itzig Manger, Peretz Markish, Abraham Sutzkever, Lamed Shapiro, Zalman Schneour, H. Leivick, Sholem Asch, and even Uri-Zvi Greenberg, all of whom incorporated depictions of Jesus into their writing at various points.

So when I hear that Shmuley Boteach has a book coming out about how Jews should relate to Jesus, forgive me if I'm a little skeptical already.

It's not that the topic should be off-limits. It's that Shmuley is neither a scholar, nor a historian, nor, indeed, even a philosopher. He is a salesman, a popularizer. These things can be fine, but when the "products" you decide to sell are people's deeply-held beliefs, it can lead to a volatile mix-- just ask Sholem Asch, who got tossed out of the Yiddish canon for his series of Christian novels. This is also not helped by the fact that Shmuley is one of the Jewish world's most self-aggrandizing and least humble personalities (also like Asch!), a man who never met a media outlet he didn't like, and who can't write an op-ed without either name-dropping a celebrity friend he hangs out with or trying to sell his new book, TV show, or half-eaten sandwich.

Simply put, Shmuley is not the right person to try to market Jesus' Jewishness. And all the more so since he apparently knows very little about the field he is purporting to comment on. As fellow Judeoblogger Izgad points out, there has been a ton of scholarship on "the historical Jesus" over the past 100-plus years, from both Jews and Christians. And unless new material is discovered, at this point it's frankly rather hard to draw any new conclusions about Jesus' identity or ideology without just making stuff up. The Gospel accounts are often vague or contradictory, and their value as reliable evidence is already questionable. Shmuley mines Haym Macoby at length and casts Jesus as a patriotic Pharisee, but it's not the only conclusion one can draw. One early Reform intellectual, I.M. Jost, saw Jesus as a brilliant man trapped by Pharisee culture, which he secretly despised. Heinrich Graetz, by contrast, thought Jesus was an Essene operating on the fringes of rabbinic Judaism. (Most Reform thinkers followed Abraham Geiger's idea that Jesus was a principled Pharisee fighting Sadducee literalism and corruption, a theme echoed by Asch in his novels.)

Frankly, the Gospels are just not all that clear. You can read Jesus any way you want to and find textual evidence for it-- that's part of the reason why there are so many Christian denominations in the world. One quick example is Jesus' Sermon on the Mount. In it, he says that he has not come to abolish the law-- and this claim is backed up within the sermon, as he procedes to create various fences around the Torah, just like the Pharisees did. On the topics of murder, adultery, oaths, and divorce, his pronouncements are far stricter than the Biblical prohibitions or rabbinic interpretations of the day. But at the same time, some of his reformulations of other themes are either more liberal than standard Pharisee teachings (kashrut being one good example), or so radically reformulated that they can't really be compared (loving your enemy and an eye for an eye come to mind). And elsewhere in the Gospels, we see Jesus doing various things that are clearly at odds with Jewish law, such as violating the Sabbath to pick food. He doesn't really justify himself there or clarify why he's doing it, he just does it.

When you look at his actions, the conclusion seems to be that when it comes to Jewish law, Jesus is (by Pharisee standards) inconsistent. Some things are very important, and some things aren't important at all. Does that make him beyond the pale of Judaism for his time period? I'm not knowledgable enough about second Temple-era Judaism to comment, but I sure do wish that when talking about the "historical Jesus" more people would take the time to read what the Gospels say he did and said, as well as get historical context about the mileu he lived in, so they can understand what was and wasn't controversial about what he was doing, instead of reading him through historical prisms from 2000 years later.

And this leads us back to Shmuley. At the end of the day, though I would prefer Shmuley stop writing books altogether, and certainly about topics as dicey as these, I find it absolutely laughable that segments of the Orthodox community sees Kosher Jesus as such a threat that they are banning people from reading it or wringing their hands that now evangelicals will think they've got a rabbi on their side. Evangelicals have been pushing Jesus on us long before Shmuley and if they're expecting an uptick in saved souls thanks to this book, I think they'll be disappointed. Besides, Shmuley lives for publicity and it's a particularly bad move to give him any excuse to claim his new "groundbreaking" book is making him the target of persecution. If you're going to talk about his book, talk about why it's either bad scholarship or extremely obvious marketing pandering.

At the end of the day, the Jewish community have to figure out what it is they don't like about Shmuley and his book. If it's that it's a crappy book, and that there are much better-- and substantive-- things to say about the topic, that's one thing. If it's that they're personally not interested in it, that's fine too. But if part of the backlash to this is that they're worried people are going to convert over it, I would say calm down and give your fellow Jews some credit. Even if that was his goal (and it's clearly not), Shmuley simply isn't that good a writer.

P.S.

If people are interested in getting a more scholarly Jewish view of Jesus, or of actually "building bridges" between Jews and Christians like Shmuley says he is, one good resource to check out might be this book. I haven't read it yet, but I'm intrigued. God knows it's got to be better than Kosher Jesus.

Limited Retrospection

The 20-year-anniversary for the Crown Heights riots/pogroms (depending on who you talk to) is coming up and it's led to a fair bit of discussion among Jewish media outlets, particularly in New York.

Unfortunately, while the myths that Crown Heights was somehow a riot "between" blacks and Jews (implying that the Jews were out attacking blacks instead of hunkering down in their homes) or that the Jewish political establishment used all its resources to stop violent attacks happening in real-time are finally being exposed and challenged, one central myth not only remains unexamined, but continually perpetuated by people who should know better.

That is, the identity of Yankel Rosenbaum. Even this week, the inaccurate statements about Rosenbaum being a "rabbinical student" or a "rabbinical scholar" are being repeated by major Jewish news outlets. Only problem is, those are lies. Intended as compliments, perhaps, but fictional.

The son of Jews who survived the Holocaust in Poland, Mr. Rosenbaum was a lecturer at the University of Melbourne in Australia. He had done his undergraduate work there and, later, had earned a master's degree. His adviser on his doctoral dissertation, Dr. John Foster, said he was studying small Jewish towns in Poland.

The information is out there. This article was written in 1991, as was this one in 1996. Academics have verified who Rosenbaum was, and wasn't. Friends of Rosenbaum have popped up sporadically on the internet trying to clarify who he was: frum, Jewishly literate, and, while not Hasidic (nor Lubavitch, though his family were), certainly on friendly terms with Chabad.

But that is not the same as rewriting the man's life and identity and turning him into just another yeshiva bochur! Rosenbaum was a passionate young man who had created his own business and was pursuing high-level academic studies in the secular world. He spoke five languages, he had a master's, he was working on his doctorate, and he was a lecturer at the University! These details don't detract from his life or his Jewishness, they add color and texture to them. In a small way, Rosenbaum was a living model of how to successfully, and proudly, live as an Orthodox Jew in an open environment, without needing to cloister oneself in a cultural ghetto. The Orthodox world (heck, even the larger Jewish world) needs more role models like him. If nothing else, that is what is insulting about him being turned into a faceless symbol of the Haredi everyman struck down by antisemitism. It deprives us all of a wonderful learning opportunity.

Yankel Rosenbaum was an Orthodox Jew who chose to live in the non-Jewish world and had been successful at it. But for an accident of random chance (which ironically happened when he was visiting a major Jewish enclave, as opposed to all the times in Australia when he was in part of a small minority), he would likely still be here.

There are lots of lessons we can take from his life, but to do that we first have to be willing to learn about the truth of who he was. Not the myth he was turned into.

Edit-after-the-fact: Every time I write about this, I manage to find more people who knew Rosenbaum personally. (One of the blessings of the Internet!) One of them had this to say: 

I actually knew Yankel, A"H. He was a person, not a symbol, and I don't think he would have been upset at the descriptions you're complaining about.

Melbourne even today is a much more diverse community than most places in the US, and lots of people have complicated religious and intellectual backgrounds. Yankel's family wasn't Lubavitch and he wasn't the sort of person you could easily classify, but he certainly associated with Chabad. Yankel went to a Lubavitch school and yeshiva, was a counsellor at Chabad camps, and socialised with people both within and without Melbourne's Lubavitch community. None of this is especially important, but I hope it fleshes him out a bit more.

Here was my response:

I appreciate you sharing the background about your friend more.

As I've gotten interested in Yankel's life just been frustrated by what I see as attempts to put this interesting person into a certain box, when it seems like a lot of what he was about was, as you said, being involved with and interacting with various different communities. I would like to see that spirit honored and remembered when people think of him, as opposed to immediately putting him in a neat category of "martyred Lubavitcher Hasid" and going on their way.

Hebrew Hullabaloo, part 2

This installment of my "Jews Behaving Badly" series takes us to Soviet Russia not long after the revolution. By the early twenties, the Soviet courts were already in full swing meting out party justice to the masses. Today's interesting historical footnote looks at one of these court judges, a 20-year-old Jewish girl named Anna Gluzman. Gluzman made headlines in 1923 for her "cold-blooded" sentencing of seven armed robbers to death in Moscow. (The eighth member of the gang was only 18, so he got off with ten years.)

Further research by journalists revealed that Gluzman was originally from Kishinev. She had quit school to work in her early teens but had studied law at the university in Odessa and had served two years as a local judge in Kharkov in the Ukraine. In April 1923, when she had her brief moment in the sun, she estimated she had sentenced 25 people to death in only a two-month period (A later article in July claimed 50). She had never witnessed an execution but claimed this was just because her schedule hadn't permitted it.

Funnily enough, most of the stories focused on her appearance, remarking on how unfeminine she was. One noted, "She was brown-eyed, plainly dressed, not pretty." Another said, "Slim and short, not at all pretty; her brown wavy hair is bobbed and parted on the side like a man's; her jaw is stern." Yet another wrote, "A pleasant smile saved her from positive ugliness, but there was no hint of feminine finery in her rough boots, black skirt, blue denim workman's blouse, buttoned high at the neck, and an old brown sweater." One paper, upon getting a snapshot, quipped, "Note the boyish features of this girl whose word has sent many to their deaths." Various reporters focused on her constant smoking, another androgynous marker. And people thought the media was rough on Hillary and Sarah Palin!

Perhaps the best line, though, belongs to the Kansas City Star:

For three months in 1923, Anna Gluzman was big news, a symbol of just how far the new Soviet state was turning over centuries old mores and customs. A young person, a woman, a Jew, in such a position of power, holding life and death in her hands... no wonder reporters were fascinated with Gluzman. As one paper put it, "Citizeness Anna Gluzman has probably no ancestors worth mentioning, but she has the power to inflict the death penalty upon those who come before her. Ten years ago the parents of Anna Gluzman were being driven from pillar to post by the minions of the Czar... but presiding in the district court of the ancient capital, she has more power than the whole caboodle of counts, princes and grand dukes in all of Muscovy."

Gluzman represented everything awe-inspiring-- and terrifying-- about the new Soviet society. How on the one hand it was willing to put real power in the hands of those who had for so long been powerless... and yet how it was also using this power to ruthlessly purge its undesirables. As Gluzman told reporters, "the question of individual lives could have no consideration when the welfare of the state and the public were involved." After interviewing her, one journalist compared the executions in the USSR to the French revolution, and remarked that "Citizeness Gluzman is a natural product of the madness, stress and storm that grip Russia now as they plagued France in Jacob's days." The Soviet drama showed America and the world all the possibilities that could come with a total social upheaval... for good and evil.

Sadly, I haven't been able to discover any information about Gluzman past 1923. Did she remain a judge? Was she part of the great Jewish purges of the 40s or 60s? Did she stay in the USSR through to the very end, or did she emigrate when she had the chance? Was she a loyal Bolshevik, or did she come to have doubts?

The writer in me worries that it's just too perfect, too pat, to have the young judge who handed down execution sentences wind up in front of a firing squad herself. But stranger things have happened...

Cordoba: For the Record...

Some conservative Christians are trying to read a lot into the name of the proposed Islamic cultural center near Ground Zero.

For instance:

The project has long been referred to (by its promoters) as The Cordoba Initiative. Many Americans, who find history boring, have hardly noticed the designation. Possibly it makes them think of dad’s old car, that Chrysler with the “rich Corinthian leather” touted by the late Ricardo Monteban. But really, there is something else going on.

And it’s hiding in plain sight.

You see, Cordoba is an important name to Islamist supremacists because it refers to the caliphate established more than 1,200 years ago in Spain. The Muslims triumphed there over the “infidel” Christians and built a great mosque on the foundation of a Christian cathedral. They were all about symbolism even back then. The proximity of the proposed mosque to Ground Zero has nothing to do with co-existence or bridge building.

Cordoba is code for conquest.

And also this twit, who has a knack for "borrowing" both from the above writer as well as Newt Gingrich:

You say Cordoba, I say Muslim conquest. The storm surrounding the Cordoba mosque in New York City is growing larger. It has many Americans fearful of what our future holds if a Muslim mosque is built two blocks from Ground Zero. Before I really dug deep to research this controversy I was conflicted. On one hand I felt disrespected, as most Americans feel; on the other I felt everyone has the religious right to build where they want to build. However, we aren't talking about a peace-loving religion like Buddhism. We're talking about the very religion that caused our country enormous heartache. It's like putting a Nazi support group next to Auschwitz.

...Don't be fooled into thinking this is a peaceful mosque. If the people pushing for this cause were so peaceful and loving, they would respect our country and respect the Americans who lost their lives on Sept. 11. Why are they pushing so hard to build this mosque when it is clearly causing turmoil? This is a big country, plenty of space to build anywhere you like. But they chose two blocks from Ground Zero? On top of that, they want to call it Cordoba.

Let us wander into history for a moment. The first Cordoba mosque in Spain was built after the Moors, a Muslim people, conquered the Spanish city of Cordoba, which was under the Roman Empire at the time. Now, it seems suspicious that Muslims would like to build a mosque near Ground Zero and call it Cordoba, which symbolizes conquest. It's not a coincidence. This appears to be a well-calculated show put on by those who support this mosque, and it is destructive to the core.

There's only one problem with this argument: when Jews think of Cordoba, as Tablet's Marc Tracy points out, they think of the Golden Age of Spain.

Though it is now to be called Park51—a reference to its address, 45-51 Park Place—its initial name was Cordoba House, and the nonprofit behind it remains the Cordoba Initiative. It’s a reference to the city of Córdoba. But what does southern Spain have to do with southern Manhattan?

Córdoba was the capital of the Islamic caliphate that controlled the Iberian peninsula during the Middle Ages. Feisal Abdul Rauf, the imam who runs the Cordoba Initiative with his wife, named his project “after the period between roughly 800 and 1200 CE, when the Cordoba Caliphate ruled much of today’s Spain, and its name reminds us that Muslims created what was, in its era, the most enlightened, pluralistic, and tolerant society on earth,” he wrote in his 2004 book What’s Right With Islam. Rauf is seeking to align himself with those who see the period as the “Golden Age of Spain,” or what’s called the convivencia—“the coexistence”—when members of the three Abrahamic faiths lived side-by-side in peace, prosperity, and astonishing cultural and intellectual creativity.

Tracy goes on to illustrate how Jewish conceptions of Spain have, not surprisingly, usually distorted the actual history to fit their ideology. However there's no question that the popular Jewish vision of the Golden Age, while not perfect, is usually positive.

I don't know much about Imam Rauf. I honestly don't know what his agenda is. (Though I do think it's interesting that people are accusing a Sufi imam of being a jihadist ideologue given that Sufis are about as well-liked by Sunni fundamentalists as Jews.) But to act like the mere use of "Cordoba" is a smoking gun for jihadism just illustrates who really doesn't know their history.

I'm not blaming the victim, but...

...but watch me while I do just that.

That's pretty much the gist from this speech, given by a Gerrer Hasidic Shoah survivor a year ago, and posted on this blog, whose name ironically enough means "Unity of the Heart". Apparently it was posted in March, well-before Holocaust Memorial Day, but given that I neglected to write a post for the occasion, I think it's appropriate that I use it for this belated purpose.

First, to the blogger's credit, he realizes that the speech is going to piss people off and tries to cushion the blow beforehand.

A people that has been devastated by the Holocaust will not find a morally acceptable rationale for focusing on one Jews choice as juxtaposed against that of another Jew. When those Jews had nothing to compare the horrors they were about to endure with anything that had gone before.

That said we Jews today should have no illusions as to the depths of monstrosity the nations of the world are capable of descending to, there is no room for compromise or excuses.

So, in other words, "We have to be careful when discussing the Holocaust, and we don't want to blame anyone for their choices, but that said..." huh? Why is the "that said" necessary? You really could have thought this introduction out better.

Here are the troubling passages from the survivor, Mordechai Raz:

My grandfather was burnt in Treblinka with all his family and their ashes covered the land of Poland.

This all happened because Jews did not listen to the words of the Gerrer Rebbe.

Really? That's why it happened? Wow, thanks for clearing that up. Incidentally, three are a lot of historians (and idiot ideologues) I need to call.

The Im’rei Emes warned the Jews of Poland 100 years ago to buy land in Palestine just as he and many of his followers had done.

Then, the Gerrer Rebbe told the Jewish people to run and escape to Palestine with whatever they had- ‘Even in their slippers’. But my grandfather, Moshe Shalom Karp, and many men like him didn’t listen to him.

Not to be rude, but when exactly did the Gerrer rebbe start telling people to "escape?" I know he started establishing institutions in Israel in the 20s, but he didn't get out of Poland until 1940, when the Nazis occupied the country and it was becoming extremely difficult to leave. If he had some foreknowledge or intuition that things were going to get bad in Poland, why wait until the war broke out to leave? Or, a better question-- why leave so many people, including his brothers, eldest son, and his grandchildren behind? Surely the rebbe's brothers could have bought some land, too! I can't help thinking this sounds like revisionism to justify the fact that while some rebbes fled and "cried," their followers stayed and died.

Back to Mr. Raz:

We had lived there for a thousand years and so many felt comfortable to buy land in Poland, in Warsaw, Lodz, Krakow, Lamze, Bialystock, Katowic, Sosnowic, Bendin Czestechow and many other cities in Poland, and also in Berlin, Nuremberg, Munich and other cities in Germany as well as Vienna in Austria.

Many other leaders, including Harav Moshe Blau from Agudat Israel in Jerusalem, Jabotinski, Harav Moliver, Gershon Koren from Bnei Brak and many other Rabbis from Palestine tried to persuade Jews from Poland and Germany to buy land in Palestine.

Those Jews who listened to them, now have grandchildren who are now wealthy in Eretz Israel, especially in Tel Aviv, in suburbs like Florentine, Lillinbloom, Shuk a Karmel etc, and also Bnei Brak, Petach Tikvah, Yerushalaim etc.

Those who didn’t listen to the voices of the Rabbanim at the time, stayed in Treblinka, Majdanek, Auschwitz, Birkenhaus, Bergen – Belsen etc.

Their ownership of Polish land was meaningless and made no difference.

I'm sorry, this is just unfair, dishonest and classist. First of all, most Jews in Europe, Poland in particular, were way too poor to buy land anywhere, period. Second, if you were going to buy land, yes, it does make kind of practical sense to buy some in the country where you live as opposed to somewhere you have no plan to ever go. Just saying. Third, ownership of land in Israel was also meaningless by the time Jews were under Nazi domination. They didn't care, and having a deed to a parcel in the desert wasn't exactly protection from Nazi atrocities or death. (Nor, incidentally, did not owning land in Israel doom one to die.) The whole focus on buying land in Israel is a bizarre red herring.

I know Mr. Raz wants to show that his rebbe was really smart and that if people had only listened to him they would have been a golden ticket to safety and life, but the reality is that this is simply not true, and is not a fair point to criticize people for.

Even though there were many wars with the Arabs, these [Gerrer] Rabbis and their followers didn’t leave Eretz Israel, and they tell everyone not to leave Eretz Israel.

The gerrer chasidim are the biggest patriots of the nation of Israel until this day!

Wow. I don't even know what to do with this. I suppose it's an instructive look at Mr. Raz's mindset, if nothing else.

You know, I feel almost bad for fisking a Holocaust survivor. But you can't give a talk in which you criticize people for essentially not being rich and important enough to buy land in Israel or have large groups of followers agitate for exit visas on their behalf and then turn around and pat yourself on the back like this:

My speech is not about advice or opinion, but about history, and a message for future generations.

I'm sorry,Mr. Raz, no dice. Yes, Israel is important. Yes, being able to read "the writing on the wall" is important, as is having "back-up plans" for emergency or extraordinary situations. But there was no logical reason to follow the rebbe's advice. Buying land was not the act that saved people. Being able to physically leave was. And it is unacceptable to chide the victims for not having had enough money to buy their way out. When you make this connection, when you say the Shoah happened because they didn't "listen," you're not just twisting the truth and using other's suffering to enhance your rebbe's image. You're also suggesting that all those people's deaths were their own fault because they were poor. That is simply beyond the pale. My relatives don't deserve this kind of commentary. And neither does your grandfather.

Truth, History, and Community

Earlier this month there was an article in the NY Times Magazine about Roman Vishniac, famous Jewish photographer of the shtetl. Alana Newhouse basically concluded that while Vishniac's pictures had been genuine, many had been staged and his captions deliberately deceitful. Why? Because Vishniac's employers, the Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, wanted him to represent the Jews of Europe as poor, traditional folk who desperately needed the help of their American cousins. So what he came back with were almost unanimously pictures-- or descriptions-- of poor Orthodox villagers.

Some bloggers suggested that maybe this wasn't that important. Others, such as John Rabe and myself, disagreed. My biggest point was that the Vishniac pictures were more than academic history, they were personal to a large number of American Jews, many of whom never got a chance to see the Old Country, and never will. Vishniac's popularity, to a degree, was because he was thought to be giving us a glimpse, a contact point, with that society. The revelation that Vishniac was fibbing-- cutting out the middle-class and anyone who wasn't visibly Orthodox, for instance, not only hurts the Jewish community personally, it also robs us of the richness of our past, and feeds into the "Fiddler on the Roof" version of Jewish history that continues to be a thorn in the side of the American Jewish community.

The Vishniac story is important because truth matters.

However, it turns out there is a silver lining in all of this. And it comes from the most surprising of sources. Rabbi Avi Shafran, hardly a huge supporter of pluralism, had this insightful comment:

But communities, in the end, are like elephants, their observers the proverbial blind men, one touching an ear and concluding that the beast is floppy and thin, the other feeling a leg and imagining the subject tree-like, a third encountering its trunk and pronouncing the pachyderm a python.

American Jewry is a good example. The air of one part of that population is permeated by academic achievement, economic success and social concerns. It constitutes a parallel universe, though, to that of the Orthodox community, which extols Torah study and observance, and breathes an atmosphere of religious tradition.

In fact, and sadly, the two worlds barely acknowledge one another. Many Jews who define themselves as non-Orthodox or unaffiliated tend to view those who consider their Jewishness paramount as relics, either amusing or threatening, depending on the day and circumstance.

And all too many Orthodox Jews, especially those of us in the more insular haredi world, can be oblivious to the large mass of our distant relatives beyond the physical and conceptual ghettos we inhabit. And when we do think of them, we often see them essentially as objects of “outreach.” A laudable goal, to be sure, born of the desire to share something precious, but qualitatively removed from the deeper recognition that they are worthy of our concern and love as fellow Jews even if they never choose to live like us.

... A photographer could easily produce a volume portraying one American Jewish world or the other. Only a book, however, that portrays both (and likely several others in-between) could rightfully lay claim to the ambitious title “The American Jewish Community.”

Even within each part of the American Jewish scene, a constricted focus can be misleading. Some non-Orthodox Jews profess atheism or agnosticism; but others ponder G-d and their purposes on earth more than do some Orthodox-by-rote. And so it would be a disservice to truth to present either sub-group as emblematic of the non-Orthodox whole.

As it would to imagine, inspired by some popular media, that the Orthodox world is rife with white-collar criminals and slumlords, or harbors a disproportionate number of child abusers. We Orthodox surely have our share of scoundrels, knaves and hypocrites. But examining the dirt under the elephant’s toenails conveys nothing at all of the animal’s majesty. As a whole, measured by the vast majority of its members, the Orthodox community is precisely what unprejudiced observers come to see: a world of broad and deep religious dedication, charity and kindness.

Assuming that a group stereotype is a group description is the essence of prejudice. As the Vishniac article reminds us, even the most compelling snapshots can mislead.

Of course, Shafran's remarks aren't perfect. He still winds up talking down to non-Orthos to elevate his own community (no social concerns in Orthodoxy? Where has he been?) It's also interesting that the Orthodox world is described with specific terms and concepts-- religious education, charity, kindness, Torah study, tradition, preciousness, etc. Non-Orthos, by contrast, focus on academic achievement, economic success, and, occasionally, "pondering God". Surely Rabbi Shafran knows that charity, kindness, and yes, even tradition, are huge parts of other Jewish denominations as well?

The irony of the whole Vishniac story, as Rabe pointed out, is that in the end it's about truth. Specifically, Jews' ability to accurately document the truth about themselves, and share it with others. Shafran is right to point out that no Jewish sector has a monopoly on stereotyping the other, or on being stereotyped. But the answer to this problem is for different kinds of Jews to spend more time with each other, to debunk stereotypes. To actively seek out the truth about who we all really are, rather than reacting to every group-insult or stereotype lobbed across an ideological mechitza.

Is this something Rabbi Shafran, Agudath Israel and Cross-Currents would support? I'd love to believe it. But honestly, I'm not holding my breath. And if that's the case, Shafran's good words, like Vishniac's pictures, ultimately just wind up becoming another kind of well-intentioned fiction.

Introducing Hebrew Hullabaloo

I've been impressed with DovBear's use of the New York Times archives to point out matters of Jewish interest, and, though I haven't used historic newspapers in blogging much previously, it was something I've been contemplating doing for a while. However, rather than completely ripping DB off, I've decided to try to stick with a particular historical theme, sort of like Fred over at On the Main Line. As you may have guessed, I have a thing for eclectic personalities. I'm attracted to stories about rebels, weirdos and iconoclasts, and when it comes to Jewish history, I particularly enjoy learning about Jews that broke the mold. So I'll be focusing on Jewish controversies. I initially thought about naming this Jews Behaving Badly (or Mosaic Machlokes), but I like the ring of Hebrew Hullabaloo, so we'll go with that until I change my mind.

To start things off, we have a murder mystery from my hometown of San Francisco. On April 4 1923, Rabbi Alfred G. (or J.) Lafee, of the Bush Street Synagogue (also known as Ohabei Shalom, presently a Zen Buddhist Temple), was found in a hotel room covered in blood. His skull had been fractured with a water glass and there was evidence that someone had tried to strangle him with a bed sheet. Rabbi Lafee's money, watch and chain, and diamond stickpin were all missing. Lafee was hospitalized and though he briefly regained consciousness, was unable to give any information about what had happened. He died on April 7, the youngest ordained rabbi in California and one of the youngest in the United States.

Here's where things start to get interesting: hotel workers said that Lafee had checked in to the hotel with a man dressed in Naval uniform. Lafee signed in as A. Layne. The sailor used the name H.B. Hickman. Lafee's relatives were baffled and said maybe the sailor had told him a "hard luck story" to gain his confidence. Police started combing the city and nearby areas, focusing on Naval bases at Vallejo and Mare Island. Shortly after Lafee's death, police detained one sailor, C.B. Hicks, after his handwriting was thought to match Hickman's signature, but he was released.

There's no information about what was going on with the case for the next two weeks. But on April 23 a story broke that police in Phoenix, AZ had arrested a 19-year-old Naval deserter named Gladwell Richardson. Richardson had initially denied any connection with Lafee but police wound up finding a diary that had detailed descriptions of the assault. Richardson first claimed he had "invented" everything in there, but eventually confessed.

Ok, so the guy admitted to killing the rabbi and his diary backed him up. Slam-dunk, right? Nope. At the trial in mid-May, Richardson claimed that he had been the victim of "an unnatural attack" and had fought back in self-defense. The grand jury determined that Richardson had acted in self-defense and cleared him of murder charges. Richardson went on to become a famous Western writer.

Reading between the lines, it sounds like Lafee may have been gay or bisexual and that he and Richardson went to the hotel for a sexual encounter. The news report suggests that Richardson's story was that Lafee tried to rape him and he stopped him. Even if this were true, though, it doesn't explain what Richardson was doing in Lafee's room under a fake name, or why it was necessary to try to strangle him AND bash his head in to stop him, much less rob him.

Thinking about it further, I've come up with a few possibilities: Richardson could have been prostituting himself and changed his mind and/or tried to rob Lafee, or Lafee could have met Richardson and "mis-read" his intentions (or vice-versa). The possibility for mutual confusion or aggression increases exponentially if there was alcohol involved.

And of course, it's also possible that Richardson made the whole story up and that his plan was always to rob Lafee. Unfortunately we'll never know, since Lafee couldn't tell his side of the story. Looking at this case, though, I find it very interesting that 90 years ago, the mere suggestion of gay activity was so shocking that it could terminate a murder trial-- and stifle much of the reporting about it. Interestingly, Fred Rosenbaum says that the SF Examiner and Chronicle both covered the story in lurid detail, but theorizes that pressure from bigwigs in the Jewish community, embarrassed by the bad press, convinced the papers to back off and the District Attorney to dismiss the case. Sadly, neither the Examiner nor Chronicle archives are online, so I'm unable to look into this at the moment. I do find it interesting that of available online papers, I was only able to find a single story mentioning the trial and its dismissal. It looks like, for the most part, the congregation got its way in hushing the matter up. Lafee's killer not only went free, living to the ripe age of 76, but generations of San Francisco Jews have never even heard of Lafee-- or his death.

Change by any other name...

So it’s interesting, I was looking at the OU’s "Jewish Action" webpage and they’ve got an article by a Rav explaining all about kitniyot… and in the midst of bending over backwards trying to rationalize a totally ridiculous custom he lays out this line:

It is important to realize that the value of a minhag is much deeper than the reason for its original inception. A minhag is our link to Jewish history; it is the way our ancestors observed Judaism for hundreds and even thousands of years. In fact, perhaps there is no greater time to appreciate the value of minhagim than at the Pesach Seder.

All well and good, of course, except that the Orthodox approach is to demand that all Ashkenazim follow this silly minhag whether or not they get anything out of it…

We dare not abandon minhagei Yisrael even when the reasons no longer seem applicable, for a family that abandons its traditions severs its connections to the past.

I love this. The suggestion that all traditions are deserving of equal support and protection is mind-blowing. Isn't this fetishization of the past the stuff that leads to certain Hasidic groups quarreling over who wears the "right" kind of hat? I mean, my ancestors had plenty of ridiculous traditions that quite frankly, I have no interest in perpetuating. Alcohol abuse and domestic violence come to mind. Defrauding the government is another good one.

Next time you avoid eating rice or corn on Pesach (if you are Ashkenazic), remember that by doing so, you are connecting to the magnificent history of the Jewish people.

Got that? So abandoning a minhag is not allowed because it will sever your connection to the past.

But here's the funny thing... in the same issue, you have no fewer than three articles, talking about NEW, yes, new, approaches to Jewish day school/Talmud education curriculum!

Some fifty years ago, following the birth of his first son, Rabbi Yitzchok Shlomo Zilberman undertook the study of the sources concerning the mitzvah of talmud Torah. After consulting with the Torah leaders of his day, and receiving encouragement from the preeminent Torah sage Dayan Yechezkel Abramsky, the well known educator from Jerusalem created the method that bears his name.

Created it, you say? Well, that sure sounds new, doesn't it? But wait, then they'd be no better than the dirty Reformies, right? Oh, the horror.

If that wasn't enough, there's another article by an Orthodox lady talking about how the MO world has gradually done a complete 180 in its position regarding Bat Mitzvahs. Bat Mitzvahs? I didn't even know that Orthos were having them. How nice that they've come around. However, using what limited English language comprehension skills I have at my disposal, I'm still having a problem seeing how this could be seen as anything other than "change."

My attitude toward the Bat Mitzvah celebration was not a mere idiosyncrasy: Rav Moshe had denounced it in a famous responsum written in 1959.

In the era when Rav Moshe penned his responsum, the Bat Mitzvah celebration was linked to the Conservative and Reform movements’ efforts to modernize and Christianize ritual in an attempt to “normalize” Jews in America. Orthodoxy was engaged in a battle for authenticity, fiercely preserving its distinctiveness. The prevailing opinion in frum circles was that it was better to avoid celebrating the Bat Mitzvah altogether. Certainly a pageant with white wedding dresses was far too close to the Catholic confirmation for comfort.

We began thinking about our daughter Bruria’s Bat Mitzvah nearly fifty years after Rav Moshe wrote his responsum. Today, the Jewish world is transformed; Orthodoxy is ascendant.2 It has triumphed in its struggle against the other denominations, and no longer has to judge itself based on the practices of others.

But wait! This can't be "change!" It can't be "new!" No, of course not!

Prominent posekim published response disagreeing with Rav Moshe, sometimes vociferously, permitting and even encouraging the Bat Mitzvah celebration.

In his zeal to stem the post-war flight from Orthodoxy, Rav Moshe apparently believed that the community was best served by doing nothing for girls reaching maturity. By maintaining this position, he discounted the Orthodox tradition of celebrating the Bat Mitzvah that existed in the early part of the twentieth century in Ashkenazic communities in Russia and Lithuania, as well as in Sephardic communities in Egypt.

See, the OU says so. That should be enough, right? Oh, and ditto for the article on the Zilberman method:

Far from being a revolutionary approach, the Zilberman method draws upon traditional teaching methods as outlined by Chazal and championed by the Maharal and Vilna Gaon.

Got that? Would-be Haredi Inquisition? I mean, sure, it works, and, yes, apparently, it's way more effective than the other method, and yes, this guy is getting credit for coming up with it FIFTY YEARS AGO, but no, it's not new. Of course not! On the contrary, it's so “traditional” that no one had heard of it for the last 200 years. Hmm, finding a new approach that makes more sense and then scrounging around for a historical precedent to back it up? Are we sure you guys didn’t go to JTS?

So, yeah. Just to recap: we dare not abandon silly outmoded food prohibitions lest we sever our connections to our past. But reinventing the entire way kids study Talmud or pulling Bat Mitzvahs out of nowhere, that’s cool.

Got it?

I have to say, this reflexive denial that any innovation is actually something new seems to almost verge on the pathological. It certainly takes the Chasam Sofer’s ridiculous mantra to a whole new low.

A History of Lawlessness

R. Harry at Emes-ve-Emunah has a question following the sentencing of the Spinka Rebbe:

Are Chasidim more prone to fraud against the government than other religious Jews? Is it common in their circles? According to this document it is not only common but generational.

I just received and read a copy of the US attorney’s sentencing recommendations for the Spinka Rebbe. It seems pretty clear that the type of thing that the Spinka Rebbe was found guilty of is a fairly common and widespread practice among other Chasidic groups.

...It is very apparent that they see nothing wrong with cheating the government in this way. That it is so widely done is a shameful black mark all of Jewry. This is an almost unprecedented Chilul HaShem in scope and size. I am embarrassed and ashamed that those who pride themselves on being the most religious among us are so deeply involved in governmental fraud.

Looking at the question from a historical perspective, I have a couple of thoughts. First, although I think it is unfair to categorize Jewish crime as a specifically Hasidic issue, it is interesting to look at the origins of the Hasidic movement insofar as they might inform Hasidic self-perceptions when it comes to dina malchuta dina. The Baal Shem Tov and his followers were rebelling against the authority of their day. Initially this was just against the rabbinical establishment, but it soon spread beyond that as the rabbis attempted to bring the secular authorities, particularly in Russia, in on their side. As the Hasidim struggled to sustain their movement against both religious and state opposition, I assume they also must have had to develop a mentality of doing "whatever it took" to keep themselves going, whether it followed "the law" or not.

To a large degree, this is not really surprising; this approach has been part of Jewish thought for millenia: if you outlaw practicing Judaism than the Jews who practice it become outlaws. There are many stories about noble Jews defying laws to practice their faith. While these characters and their actions are often characterized as brave role models, they also contain a core value which condones, or even encourages, defying authority when that authority is seen as illegitimate. You see similar dynamics when Jews start getting drafted into the Russian Army- people doing everything they can to get out of it, providing Jewish access and services to Jewish recruits despite Russian law, etc. None of this actions are objectively bad, but they provide another precedent where secular law is superseded by Jewish law. The "Jewish rebel" phenomenon happens over and over again: The Kotzker and Gerrer rebbes on the run from the Russian Army, the pre-State Zionists gathering arms and policing their own communities rather than relying on apathetic and untrustworthy government forces, etc. There is a long Jewish history of bending or breaking the law when Jewish leaders feel that it is necessary.

So, when push comes to shove, plenty of Jews have shown, again and again, that just because the law says something doesn't mean they intend to follow it. To a certain degree this a good thing; it shows an independence of thought and conscience and a skepticism of government and law that, given the precarious Jewish treatment at the hand of governments throughout history, is perhaps only healthy and natural. Government and law shouldn't be put up on a pedestal. We should always question potentially immoral laws and follow our consciences.

The problem, though, is that this reasoning, if stretched, can also be used to justify almost any illegal action-- if the community feels persecuted, if they feel they "really need" to do something to help themselves (i.e., steal or cheat), if they perceive the government or the government agency as being antisemitic, anti-Orthodox, anti-whatever. This danger is compounded in cases where the rank-and-file have been educated to view only their own leaders and community as legitimate, and where secular law is seen as, at best, not terribly important, and at worst, irrelevant. This is an issue that affects Hasidim, Mitnagdim, and even Religious Zionists in Israel. Have some leaders who teach that the government is illegitimate and that its laws are unfair or unimportant, and you have a perfect system in which the law will be systematically ignored or broken. If your primary loyalty and values are to God, your religious leader, and your community, NOT to the state, not to the larger area where you live, not to the rule or law or to your fellow citizens, then you basically have no civic background in which you can really value law. The sad part as it relates to Mafdalim in Israel is that you have groups of people who have previously been the most patriotic and the most committed to helping the state who are now feeling persecuted and disenfranchised and (some of whom) are in the process of turning away from it and actively disobeying its laws.

So no, it's not just a Hasidic problem. It's not even an exclusively Orthodox problem. All sorts of Jews engage in illegal activities, and as recently as World War Two (and certainly World War One) you still had secular Jews in Europe whose Jewish identity may contributed to the feeling that "goyishe" laws did not apply to them. I would attribute this in part to the sense that they were not represented in their countries' governments, not treated as citizens, or explicitly discriminated against. In short, they were disenfranchised and alienated from their countries, and therefore saw no reason to follow their laws.

The question is what has changed since. In Western democracies, Jews do have a voice. They are treated equally. They can succeed financially and politically. In Israel, Jews can participate in just about any sphere of activity they chose. But within some sectors of Orthodox Judaism, you still see a very dramatic sense of "us and them." They do not feel like they are part of the state-- any state. And that is where you see a cultural and even political association with breaking the law-- where Jewishness itself becomes a rationale for why the law doesn't apply.

Dina malchuta dina... Unless you're Jewish and don't feel like it. In which case, never mind.

Because Inquiring Minds Inquired

Adam asks,

A Friar can be:

"Frei-er", from the Yiddish/German "free", meaning a Jew who has freed himself of his Torah obligations (a heretic, apostate, or more politely, a "secularist")

A Friar can also be a Catholic cleric who dresses in brown robes, takes vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, and religious work for a given community.

Here in Israel, a Friar is slang for a sucker, a chump, a gullible person. (I don't know the origin of this).

or, maybe you just cook strings of potatoes at a fast food restaurant.

So, that is my question - what find of "friar" are you?

Though I do enjoy fried potatoes and have always had a soft spot for Fr. Tuck (see my profile image), I have long considered myself quite "Frei" in the classical Yiddish sense. As one friend explained to me, "If you had gotten a better religious education, you'd be considered an apikoros." Since I had none, I can better be thought of as a "child raised by [Gentile] nations [from infancy]," albeit one who has done a fair amount of remedial extra credit work in the decade-plus since discovering Judaism and Jewish history/culture. Anyone that doubts me can check my bookshelves sagging with Judaica. In fact many of the more pseudo-philosophical ramblings on this blog were originally part of a not-very-well-conceived book project I started in college called "Letters from a Frier Yid." Luckily, English happens to love a pun.

Next, Dan over at "OMGwhere'dmyeyesgo!"questions just how much relevance Poland has after all, in response to my Marek Edelman post.

Maybe Poland has indeed became irrelevant after the Ghetto? Simply, there are almost no Jews left there.

I'm not sure that the issue of Jewish relevance is uniquely, or even primarily, determined by one's Jewish population alone. If we're going to be picky, there are three times more Jews in France than in Boston. Does that mean France's Jewish population is three times as important as Boston? Does it devalue the many accomplishments and innovations that Boston's Jewish community has created over the years? Of course not. Nor, for that matter, does the fact that French Jewry is not as notable on the global Jewish scene as Brooklyn's mean that there is something the matter with Judaism in France.

Simply put, Poland is relevant because of its strong historical connection for millions of American Jews. Poland is, for many of us, "the Old Country," and it was the homeland for generations of our people for over 1,000 years. Poland was the site of great yeshivas, of important Jewish social movements, of financial, technological and scientific innovations in the Jewish community, and so on. Poland was not without its warts, but by and large, when people looked for Jewish success stories in Eastern Europe, they looked to Poland.

The past of the last 1,000 years cannot, and should not, be forgotten, ignored or sidelined because of the most recent 70, especially when Poland is undergoing a slow but enthusiastic Jewish revival movement. There are estimated to be tens of thousands of Poles of Jewish descent, (I found a small branch of distant cousins living in southern Poland a few years ago and hope to visit them in the next year or so) many of whom are becoming interested in learning more about their heritage, and more resources are being put into encouraging Jewish culture, community and learning in Poland now than ever before. There are now foreign rabbis coming to Poland to serve congregants there, running the gamut from Chabad to Reform. There are a small number of synagogues (including one in Oswiecim) slowly growing their communities again, as well as more secular-oriented Jewish social clubs and landsmanschaften. All of these are positive developments and a reason to celebrate that, whatever the old men at your Hebrew school or the shul kiddush klatch may have told you, Poland is more than a Jewish graveyard.

Perhaps even more important in a country where Jews are such a small minority of the population, Christian Poles are becoming more and more interested in Jewish culture-- see for instance Krakow's annual Jewish Culture Festival, which attracts thousands of non-Jewish visitors. These developments are significant, and should be encouraged.

The fact that Poland does not have as large a Jewish population as other places or as sexy or exotic an image as the Jews of India or Uganda does not mean that we should pretend that it doesn't still have something to offer to the global Jewish conversation.

Another chapter closes

The world lost a piece of history today. Marek Edelman, the last living leader of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, died at age 90. Edelman was 23 when he, along with ZOB comrades Mordechai Anielewicz, Yitzhak Zuckerman, Zivia Lubetkin, Simcha Rotem and others (as well as the Revisionist-oriented ZZW) led a revolt against the Nazi forces that held out for five weeks-- longer than the entire Polish army had against the initial German invasion.

Edelman always fascinated me for his iconoclasm. While most of the ZOB leadership were left-wing Zionists ideologically allied with Hashomer Hatzair (survivors Zuckerman and Lubetkin were involved in the Brichah and later went to Israel), Edelman was a member of the Bund (he broke ranks with them to work with the ZOB), later following his socialist convictions by staying in Poland for the rest of his life, where he practiced medicine. Edelman was active in Polish politics for decades, first participating in the Polish Warsaw Uprising of '44, then working with Solidarity and serving in Polish Parliament.

While every other member of the ZOB has been enshrined in mainstream Jewish memory as good, conventional, dedicated Zionists-- continuing the theme that the only smart, tough, fighting Jews are either in, or associated with, Israel, Edelman was the fly in the ointment, showing that tough Jews did not all think alike, and were not all convinced, even after the Warsaw Ghetto, that Poland and the Diaspora were irrelevant to the Jewish experience.

My respects to Edelman's memory and to his family. He was a true hero, showing us all both how to have the courage to fight for our right to exist, and to live according to our own values, regardless of others' thoughts or opinions.

Correction, Please

About a month ago one of UTJ's newer (well, actually, older) MKs announced he had an important point to make. Unfortunately it revealed a laughably myopic and self-important view of Jewish history and religion:

Knesset Member Menachem Eliezer Moses, chairman of the Haredi-religious United Torah Judaism party, has found that an animal welfare bill supported by the government could make his shtreimel an endangered species. The shtreimel is a unique fur hat traditionally worn by members of Hassidic sects on special occasions.

MK Moses wants fur imported for use in making shtreimels be exempted from the general prohibition. "It is inconceivable," he said, "to support a bill that outlaws imports for such a clear and important religious need."

Pardon my ignorance, sir, but exactly what "clear religious need" is that? As a friendly neighborhood rabbi, I'm certain you'd be happy to show me the many detailed halachot on shtreimels. Inquiring minds want to know.

Moses, who is a Belzer Hassid and also a rabbi, explained to the coalition representatives the meaning and importance of the shtreimel to the sector his party represents.

The UTJ leader was at pains to explain that he does not oppose the proposed law entirely, "but I request that the law include an appropriate exception stating that import for religious purposes will not be infringed and will not be considered a violation of the law." With a call for the government ministers to amend the law, MK Moses added, "We are not in the Middle Ages, when Jews were forbidden to use explicitly Jewish symbols."

The shtreimel an explicitly Jewish symbol? Um... no. We stole the shtreimel from Polish noblemen, who presumably then stopped wearing them because even back in the 1700s, Jews were not considered all that cool.

It's funny MK Moses mentioned the Middle Ages because, contrary to what he's semi-implying, we didn't HAVE shtreimels back then. The frigging Reform movement has been around longer than Jewish shtreimels. This guy claims that the earliest Jewish use of shtreimels were by the early Chabad hasidim, which would still only be c. 1770s. He also notes that Peter the Great, or should I say Pinhas ben Alexei, the Tzaddik of Romanov, wore a shtreimel.

Thanks to the power of the internet, I was lucky enough to find a picture of this magnificent specimen of Torah-True History:


























Agh! The Yiddishkeit, it buuuurns!

Incidentally, I like this last line. Apparently someone at Arutz Sheva has a sense of humor:

The shtreimel can be made from genuine or synthetic fur, with the latter actually more common among Israeli Hassidic Jews than those overseas. The Rebbe of the Gerrer Hassidic sect, in fact, issued an edict that his followers may only purchase spodiks (a style of shtreimel) made of fake fur and that cost less than $600.

Hmm, if only the Belzer rebbe (or Viznitz?) would follow the Gerrer's lead.

Revolutionary Rabbis, part 2, or "A plea for Historical Honesty"

Got more confirmation on the Kotzker and Gerer rebbe's involvement in the November revolution of 1830. The source?

Rabbi Berel Wein:

[Footnote:] Reb Mendel's original family name was Halperin, but because of his support of the Polish national revolution, he changed it to Morgenstern to confuse and escape the punishment of the Russian conqueror. Rabbi Yitzhak Meir's original name was Rottenberg but he changed it to Alter for the same reason as Reb Mendel. Whether their support of the Poles was voluntary or coerced is still a debate among scholars.

Given that I've only been able to find mention of this in one journal article and one book on Jewish history I'd be interested to find out which scholars Rabbi Wein is talking about here (or is he just trying to hedge his bets by not openly saying the rabbis supported Polish indepence?), but I'm glad he's at least helping spread some information about a little-known part of Jewish history that has ripple-effects down to the present-day. If rosh yeshivot are flipping their lids hearing about rabbis of yesteryear just listening to Zionist lecturers, I can't imagine what certain Hasidim would think about their Alter-Alter-Alter-rebbes actively supporting the Polish independence movement and becoming fugitives in the process. Doesn't exactly provide the desired model of "otherworldlyness" or keeping the goyim at arm's length now, does it?

But wait, I found another: Rabbi Dov Ber Meisels, descendant of the Rema, author of a commentary on Rambam's Sefer ha-Mitzvot, and Chief Rabbi of Krakow and later Warsaw. A contemporary of the Kotzker, Rabbi Meisels was an arms-runner for the same 1830 uprising that caused the Kotzker and Gerer to go on the lam. He was also involved in the Krakow Uprising sixteen years later, serving as one of twelve city council members, was elected to the Austrian Parliament (where he sat with the radicals against the occupying government).

Meisels was a major figure in organizing Warsaw's Jews for Polish independence before and during the 1863 Uprising and was involved in various joint Polish-Jewish demonstrations. His activism got him arrested and deported from Warsaw in 1861. Returning a year later, he organized aid and wrote speeches supporting the Uprising as it occured and was again arrested and expelled by the Russians. Upon returning a second time, he lived under constant surveilance by authorities.

Rabbi Meisels died in 1870, and his funeral was the site of a major Polish-Jewish rally against Russian occupation. He was such a volatile figure that the army forbade printing any obituaries following his death.

What does all this show? Only that Jewish history is a lot more complicated than some modern-day arbiters of truth would have us believe. Remember that 150 years ago, "Poland" encompassed most of the European Jewish population, among them many of the most traditional and religious. These are people we have been trained to think of as merely pious, apolitical, even conservative. And some of them were. But there were also others who held some very radical positions, and who saw no conflict between being frum, or even a rabbi or rebbe, a leader and model to hundreds, thousands of other Jews, and interacting with the outside world, with non-Jews, or tangling with thorny political issues.

We should examine our past openly and honestly before enforcing our own pet issues supposedly "on the authority of our grandfathers." If we take a look at the whole picture (as some have tried to do), we find that our grandfathers and their grandfathers had a much more nuanced view of the world than we give them credit. We should not let the creative, even radical personalities of yesterday be co-opted or sanitized by the narrow views of their grandchildren today. Would the Hidushei ha-Rim even recognize his great-great-great-grandson? Would he recognize himself as he has been re-imagined in Ger haigography? Would the Baal Shem Tov, for that matter? Or the Rambam?

I am beginning to think that the great debates of our time will not focus on which denominational clique we affiliate with, but over how intellectually honest we are willing to be with each other and ourselves, and with the source material of Judaism and Jewish history. We will have to struggle over whether we decide to make truth, honesty and openness important values in of themselves, worth defending and fighting for.

The irony is that by censoring the past of "the sages", Orthodox leaders perpetuate the idea to other Jews that there is nothing interesting, engaging, or relevant in Jewish history or tradition. Then again, maybe that is part of the intent and problem-- that some would rather spread the notion of a sanitized past to keep their hold on their own communities and children and could care less if other Jews care about their heritage or not.

The problem is that even if a Jew is not Orthodox, or even no longer a Jew, their communal and family history should still be accessible to them. This is one of the reasons I am so passionate about genealogy and am intrigued by the concept of translating Yizkor books, maintaining the oral history and heritage of communities, with all the squabbles and messiness that implies-- as much as some people may not like the idea, the greatest rebbe and the grandest heretic can still be landsmen, or even family. And their tastes should not dictate what history is allowed to continue on down the line. I have no rabbinical lineage, but some of my ancestors did come from Vilna, and as such, I have just as legitimate a claim-- and right-- to the history of the Vilna Jews as a descendant of the Gaon. By the same token, their lives and histories should not be censored in order to create the image that Vilna was an "ideal" community (by whose standards?) free of strife and conflict in order to somehow honor or elevate the Gaon or his birthplace.

The same point, incidentally, applies to other historical biases present in Jewish history-- for instance, viewing all events through the prism of Zionism or proto-Zionism, and emphasizing the denigrations of the "Ghetto Jew" existence to justify the "New Jew" prototype of Herzl and Nordau, or whitewashing the complexities, setbacks, and failings of Zionism and Israel themselves. The American branch of the discipline has similar blind spots; in particular, focusing on or elevating groups of Jews from certain ethnic, class or political backgrounds at the expense of others.

The bottom line is that we distort our history at our own peril-- and now, more than ever, we, all of us, religious, secular, questioning, American, Israeli, Zionist, Socialist, Republican, Democrat, we all need history and role models we can relate to, use for inspiration, and most of all, trust. Do not purge our history of the great and creative men and women who found a way to engage with their worlds and balance their identities. Do not deny our children our history. It is our right. It is their legacy.

The Myth of the (Non) Fighting Jew

Cross-posted to DovBear.

There was a line in a Haaretz article about the upcoming Defiance movie that rubbed me the wrong way. Actually, most of the article was raising alarm bells. Not because the movie won't be good, I'm sure it will be. But the focus of the piece happened to be remarking on the fact that four or five Bielski grandkids are in the IDF, and tying this in with a family military tradition:

A family of warrior Jews, from partisan to paratrooper

It's a story made for Hollywood. The grandfather fought the Nazis, the son fought in the Yom Kippur War, and last month the American-born grandson decided to make Israel home and join its defense forces.

...While Bielski's native New York may not have presented the same challenges as those suffered by his grandfather in World War II-era Belarus, the 21-year-old has decided to follow in the footsteps of his ancestors and immigrate to Israel.

"I came to Israel on birthright when I was a freshman in college," he said. "I loved it. My whole family was in the army here."

Bielski finished college in three years, not even pausing to don a cap and gown. Instead, the day after his last class, he flew to Israel where an Israel Defense Forces uniform was waiting.

The scene was familiar for Elan's Israeli-born father, Yakow, who returned to his native land in 1973 with his brother after a stint in the U.S. to fight in the Yom Kippur War. Zus, who had settled in Israel for ten years after the Holocaust and fought in the 1948 Independence War , was reluctant to see his sons go.

Yakow himself is proud of Elan's decision to join the army, though he said that one of the reasons his own father had left Israel was because of all the wars.

While Elan echoed his father and grandfather's concern of seeing their children enlist in the army, he said: "I'd be proud of my kids to make the same decision I did."

Love, war, and genetics

...In addition to Elan Bielski, two other descendants of the brothers are serving in the IDF, and another is now in the reserves. Bielski's twin sister also plans to move to Israel; his older sister is married in the U.S. with a four-month old named after Zus.

Two, going on three, generations of parental instinct can't seem to stop the Bielskis from joining Israel's army and society. "It's just genetic," Yakow said. We're warrior Jews."

Here's the problem: the whole piece (supported by the comments of Bielski pere and fils) suggests that only "certain families" have it in them to be warrior Jews- which, of course, means that other people don't. The reason the "fighting Jew" myth is so disturbing because it is based on a false premise, and because it libels all who do not neatly fit under it as (sterotypically?) weak pacifists.

This has been part-and-parcel of Jewish sociology for well over one hundred years, since the days when the Bund cells and Hashomer societies first started rallying Jews around the concept of self-defense and pride. Back then, their opponents were the maintainers of the status-quo and the perception that Jews were meek and submissive yeshiva students who would rather beg for their lives or offer their enemy a bribe than crush his skull with a rock- in short, the rabbinical establishment.

Ironically, in those early days of the 1880s and 1900s when the "fighting Jew"/Ghetto Jew dichotomy was being set up by ideologues and propagandists, most of the recruits coming into the Jewish Socialist and Zionist movements were from religious homes whose families did not have specific martial traditions. Yet somehow they adapted when given the proper training, motivation, and community support. The same is mirrored in the history of American Jews and the modern Israeli army- one does not need to be born into a "warrior family" to become a capable soldier or tactician. Yet today in Israel there is an unspoken assumption that the Haredim choose not to fight because they are somehow incapable of fighting- a stereotype that persists despite the existence of units like the Nahal Haredim (as if the long history between the Mafdal and IDF was not proof enough that there is no reason an Orthodox Jew cannot be a warrior as well).

One could even go back further- to use just the example of one country I'm familiar with, Poland, Jews fought for Napoleon at the Battle of Warsaw and in each of that country's Revolutions. This fighting was not restricted to secularists or those drifting from the faith (Berek Joselowicz's unit was known as "The Beardlings" because they would not shave; they also demanded the Sabbath off and would only eat kosher food); there are also cases of revolutionary rabbis. Check out this story about two rabbis you may have heard of, courtesy of an old article in Polin:

Even though the hagiographies of the hasidic leaders neglect Polish politics, there is some evidence that hasidim suppoorted the 1830 revolt. We have an account that Rabbi Menahem Mendel Morgenstern of Kotzk and his pupil Rabbi Isaac Meir Rothernberg, founder of the Ger dynasty, actively encouraged the Jews to aid the Poles in their rebellion and that after the Russian victory both were forced to travel to Lemberg (Lwow), then the capital of the Austrian province of Galicia, to hide from the Russian authorities. They were only able to return to Kotzk after changing their names; Menahem Mendel changed his last name from Halpern to Morgenstern, Isaac Meir from Rothenberg to Alter.

Bet you never heard about that in yeshiva. Neither, mind you, would you have encountered it in any book about these rabbis. This is part of the split Jewish tradition over how to deal with Jews that don't fit the "peaceful" paradigm- which, by the way, is itself a construct, since there are plenty of "fighting Jews" in the Torah- and afterwards! (What would you call the Bar Kochkba revolt, or the Zealots at Massada?) We would prefer to identify "tough Jews" as a vicarious exception to the meek, pious or status-quo Jews that were the standard, rather than taking an objective look at the history and consider that, god forbid, there were revolutionary rabbis or frum soldiers fighting for Napoleon.

Look forward to the twentieth century and you see the same obfuscation when it comes to Jewish criminals- plenty of whom used violence for achieving their goals. Even before the days of Lansky and Siegel, you had organized crime in Warsaw, Lodz and Odessa. Modern Yiddish writers like Sholem Asch freely depicted the "Jewish underground" in novels like Mottke the Theif, and his play God of Vengeance. For crying out loud, prostitution was a cottage industry in Jewish Buenos Aires, and there were many layers of violence involved in maintaining business as usual.

And, ironically, when Jews took a stand against these undesirable elements within their community, preying on their weakest members, it was again, the "fighting Jews" who took action. One notable flare-up was the May 1905 Alphonsenpogrom [Pimp-Pogrom], where the Jewish Bund in Warsaw went on a three-day rampage through the city's red-light district, attacking brothels and cafes. The New York Times wrote about the Socialists' assault on not only the pimps' places of business, but also their worldly possessions:

Wardrobes, pianos and mirrors were thrown out of the windows. The mob in the streets left open spaces for the falling articles and then completed the work of destruction. In one place, a quantity of valuable jewelry was taken out and deliberately smashed with stones.

The Alphonsenpogrom left 8 dead and 100 injured. (Not necessarily the Bund's finest moment, but a "tough Jew" moment? Unquestionably.) And it was not the only incident. According to Prostitution and Prejudice (the primary source for Nathan Englander's latest novel), there were others, as well. In 1903 The Jewish Vigilance Society in Cardiff, Wales, challenged their pimps in street combat and won. In Buenos Aires in 1909, the Poale Zion beat up local white slavers after an altercation in a theater of a play critical of prostitution. In 1910 some young men in Rio de Janero accosted the "pimps' congregation" on their way back from dedicating a new Torah scroll. The pimps were attacked and the Torah scroll given to "more-deserving" folks.

We don't hear about any of this controversial history because the personalities don't fit in with cookie-cutter views of secular or religious Jews, or rich vs. poor. By doing this we do our ancestors, and our descendants, a disservice. By censoring the Jewish past we impair the Jewish present, and further limit the Jewish future to take honest assessments about who we are as a people, based on factual information.

The Bielskis accomplished an amazing thing, and no one is contesting that. But to suggest that being a "fighting Jew" is genetic also means that you are passing a judgment on all the non-warriors in the Jewish family, essentially establishing a caste system between those rough-neck toughs and those meek yeshiva bochurs. The irony is that there are plenty of cases, in history and today, where the two may be brothers. Or one and the same.