Romney vs Wright

It looks like playing dirty is still the GOP's favored strategy. According to a report in the Times today a billionaire Obama-hater plans to bankroll a series of advertisements that will attack the president for his relationship with Jeremiah Wright.

This should be fun.

I hope the president fights back by linking Mormon Mitt Romney to some of the evil things his own church has said and done .

No, not polygamy. I'm referring to institutionalized racism. Until 1978 it was osur for a black man to serve as a Mormon priest. Not only is there no record of Mitt ever repudiating this, he also worked as Mormon missionary in the 60s. This means that during the Civil Rights era, Mitt Romney worked to convert people into a faith that practiced overt racism. He might as well have been a hiring manager for the Birmingham Alabama sheriff's office.

Though Romney, ad hayom hazeh, refuses to badmouth any Mormon doctrine past or present, it still doesn't follow that he is a racist. Nor, does it follow from his association with Rev. Wright that Obama hates America. But if we're going to discredit Obama for attending a church with a preacher who denounced the United States, shouldn't we discredit Romney for his membership in a racist church? Obama at least has attempted to distance himself from the terrible things Wright said; Romney, on the other hand,  has never publicly disagreed with Mormon teachings.

If you're going to argue that Obama should have known better then to stay in Wright's church, we can also argue that Romney should have known better then to remain a Mormon.

Search for more information about sauce for the goose at4torah.com

If you love Torah Judaism stay home on May 20

You're required to attend Met games.
 Otherwise we'll look bad in in front of the Yankee fans.

If a Met fan tried this argument, he'd be laughed right out of the room. And with good reason. We understand that the Mets have to earn our support. Unquestioned loyalty invites laziness, and even corruption, from the objects of such loyalty. Why should the Mets pursue free agents or invest in their farm team, if they can count of the fans to show up anyway? For the matter, why should General Manager Sandy Alderson put in an honest day's work if the stadium is going to fill up irrespective of his efforts?  If Met fans don't punish bad teams with poor attendance, players and management are encouraged to coast.

This is why any loyal fan of charedi Judaism should be deeply offended by the message currently being used to promote the CitiField Asifa on May 20. Instead of telling us why the Asifa is important, we are being urged to save the organizers from embarrassment. Rather than put a good team on the field, the event organizers are asking us to prop up a bunch of farm hands and, through our attendance at the Asifa, shield them from the consequences of their own failures.

I agree that the gedolim will look bad, if the stadium is not filled on May 20, but I think we owe it to ourselves and to the community we cherish to make them look bad. If you stay home on May 20, the message will be clear: We do not agree with your leadership on issues such as the Internet. We think your positions to date on this subject have been flawed. By "making them look bad", we make plain our disagreement with their approach. And though some of the sheep in the audience my be reluctant to deliver such a strong message to the Sages of Israel, consider the alternatives. If you don't let the leaders know when they're not performing up to expectations, they have no incentive to change their ways.

Autocracy is founded upon the Gedolim's self-understanding of themselves as the depository and bearer of absolute truth and it is the duty of people to conform to the truth. Democracy is based upon the understanding that truth is available to human beings only in partial ways and therefore all people can contribute to the search for truth in "creative mutuality [Adapted from here]  Leaders, even autocratic leaders, derive their power from the people. They lead us because we let them lead us. As a wag said about the Pope, "He has primacy over the council because the council gives him primacy over the council" So to with us. The gedolim have primacy over us, because we grant them primacy. If we're not happy with their leadership, we have the right, indeed the obligation, to refuse to be led. Staying home on May 20 is a start.


Search for more information about the holiness of democracy  at4torah.com

More anti-science nonsense from Avi Safran

How does Avi Safran find the nerve to churn out nonsense like this on a regular basis?

Once again: the climate may in fact be in crisis  What discomforts me, though, is the stance of those who insist that they know with absolute surety—which they can’t—that it is. And that by lambasting any who dare dissent from their pronouncement, they show unwillingness to even consider the possibility that the world G-d created for us humans may not need our help to stay inhabitable—that, in His wisdom, He may have imbued not only our skin with the ability to heal its wounds, but the earth’s to do the same. 

If the climate "may in fact" be in crises, why is he criticizing scientists for lack of faith? His opening sentence concedes they may be right to worry. And though comparing the earth to the human body is a flawed analogy, why doesn't Avi see how his own analogy trips him up? Yes, the human body has the power to heal itself, but human beings also have the power to kill each other! Is it really such a serious lack of faith to suggest we also have the power to "kill" the earth?

Search for more information about the danger of being extremely anti-science at4torah.com

Posters supporting Weberman are up in Williamsburg

Posters such as the ones pictured above are being used to invite Willamsburg pedestrians to a fundraiser on behalf of accused sex offender Nechamia Weberman. Victim groups think this awful. I disagree.

Weberman hasn't been convicted yet. He merely stands accused of committing a heinous crime, but the jury - quite literally - is still out.  If his friends and neighbors believe he is innocent and wish to help him, what's wrong with that?

Though much has been said about victim harassment, this belongs to a different category. Abusing your authority to silence or intimidate a victim is evil. Supporting your friend is something else. The former is harassment; the latter  is avdocacy.

Search for more information about Wiliamsburg at4torah.com

Secret origins: Challah dipped in honey

Does this sound familiar?

After all the preparations have been completed, the father offers each member of the family a piece of bread dipped in honey, which had been previously blessed in church.

From this account of the traditional Christmas eve feast in the Ukraine 

Search for more information about SECRET ORIGINS at4torah.com

Secret origin of kreplach

The people of the Slavic lands are big into pierogi, a dumpling made of dough, shaped into a semi-circle and filled with meat, potato or cheese. Listen to Wikipedia:

Some cookbooks from the 17th century describe how even during that era the Pierogi were considered a staple of the Polish diet, and each holiday had its own special kind of Pierogi created. There were different shapes and fillings for holidays such as Christmas and Easter, and important events like weddings, had their own special type of Pierogies "kirniki" – filled with chicken meat. There were also Pierogies made especially for mourning/wakes, and even some for caroling season in January.

The very name of the dish is derived from "pir" the Proto-Slavic word for festivity, and the dish is associated with Saint Hyacinth a 13th century Polish friar. To this day, pierogi are a signature item of  Polish cusine. They are also well-loved in the Ukraine, where they are called varenyky and considered an indispensable part of the Christmas eve feast.

Though its roots are in Germany, Ashkenazi Judaism continued its development in the Slavic lands. Somewhere along the way, our own style of pierogi developed and we called it kreplach.

The origin of kreplach really is as simple as that. We ate therm because everyone in that time place ate them. It has no more mystical significance then the Ukranian varenyky or the Russian pelmeni or any of the other Slavic dumplings that developed in around the same place at around the same time. However, nothing is more human then inventing significance for ordinary things - and then forgetting what you've done.

We've already seen how a pagan hair-cutting ceremony was transformed into an essential Jewish rite of passage after someone clever associated it with Deut. 20:19 ("Man is like the tree of a field...") and with orlah, the restriction on taking fruit from a tree before its third year.

The same sort thing happened with kreplach.  At some point someone clever came up with reasons for associating kreplach with Yom Kipppur, but those reasons were invented after we were already eating kreplach on erev Yom Kppur. At the beginning, the reasons were probably accompanied with a knowing wink. Or, perhaps the reasons were invented after the milieu changed and Jews were no longer surrounded by people who all celebrated their solemn days with dumplings.

What seems perfectly obvious, though, is that we eat kreplach because once upon a time some of our ancestors lived in a place where eating dumplings and celebrating a most solemn holiday was culturally inseparable, and not because a wise man proposed a new food to symbolically represent judgement wrapped in mercy.

Search for more information about kreplach at4torah.com

Mocking the Matzav

A note from EFREX

DB: Thought you might get a kick out of this one.

For some reason, I periodically trawl the bastion of intellectual cowardice and moral hypocrisy known as matzav.com. Yesterday, they posted the following article on Obama’s gay marriage stance (as usual, ripped from another site with all external links stripped and a snide comment thrown into the headline):

http://matzav.com/your-president-obama-affirms-his-support-for-same-gender-marriage#comments

The comments are the usual sprawl of incoherent rantings, but I thought commenter #24’s line wins the prize for unintentional hilarity:

“Another sign that it’s time to head over to Eretz Yisroel. The frum community has focused on this issue in recent months (e.g., the Weprin-Turner election). This time we ought to vote with our feet and stand up for Torah values.”

I’m all for anything that inspires religious aliyah (even in the charedi community), but I’m pretty sure this commentator is pretty clueless about Israel’s policies on gay rights, which are so far to the left of anything in this country that Obama’s comments would qualify him as a political conservative in the Knesset (see, for instance, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_in_Israel)

One of these days, some Republican family-rights wingnut is going to go to Israel, spend a Friday night in Tel Aviv, and have his head explode. I can only hope that Jon Stewart is around to chronicle it…

Take care!

Search for more information about the matzav at4torah.com

What are some of the things every Jew should know?

The time has come to update the famous list created here exactly six years ago (and curses on JS/Kit and Echo for devouring Haloscan and your great comments.)

The folks on Twitter want an open thread, so here you go and have fun.

An incredibly stupid thing, a smart person said

Rabbi Marc D. Angel:

‎"The real issue here is not “marriage equality”—but how the moral foundations of society are established. If decisions are entirely in the domain of human beings, then a civil society can make whatever rules it wants, without reference to any Divine authority. The problem with this approach is that it essentially undermines a Divine foundation for morality, and leads to a subjective human-made morality that ultimately has no clear boundaries. Once God is removed from the equation, everything is—or can be, or should be—permissible." 

News flash: A subjective and human-made morality is the only kind of morality there is because all morality is based on how we human beings choose to accept and understand and interpret the sources of morality we have, in turn, chosen to accept.

Furthermore, "Once God is removed from the equation, everything is—or can be, or should be—permissible." is the sort of fallacious statement you expect to hear debunked in a first year philosophy class. Over 2000 years ago, Plato demonstrated that God and morality are not connected. The terminal flaw in Angel's argument becomes apparent with one question:

Is gay marriage wrong because God said so, or did God say it was wrong because it is?

If God said gay marriage is wrong because it is, it follows that morality is independent of God. He saw it was wrong, and ruled it forbidden. Presumably so can we because the standard exists apart from God.  On the other hand, if gay marriage is wrong only because God said so, it follows that morality is arbitrary.

Note: This is just an example. To the best of my knowledge God has never expressed an opinion on gay marriage.

Search for more information about ### at4torah.com

Time magazine puts a breastfeeding four year old on its cover

Time opts for scandalous with its current cover shot, managing to offend mothers by suggesting they're pathetic wimps if they stop nursing after their kids grow teeth* while also wrecking the life of a little boy. Well done, Time magazine!

*Significant because a kid with a full-set of teeth can acquire nutrients from regular food, and thus has no further "natural" need for breast milk. A woman who continues nursing past that point isn't a super mom. She's someone who puts her own needs, and likely her own insecurities,  ahead of the kid.**

And hey, not to open up another round of debate, but do any of you really want to see something like this, coming soon, to a shul near you?

** For good measure, chew or suck or whatever on this:

The Case Against Breast Feeding by Hanna Rosin 

In certain overachieving circles, breast-feeding is no longer a choice—it’s a no-exceptions requirement, the ultimate badge of responsible parenting. Yet the actual health benefits of breast-feeding are surprisingly thin, far thinner than most popular literature indicates. Is breast-feeding right for every family? Or is it this generation’s vacuum cleaner—an instrument of misery that mostly just keeps women down?

Search for more information about stuff I don't want to see in shul at4torah.com

Down with the Internet!

Here's another one of those terrible things your unsuspecting, innocent children might find online: a New York Times article describing the lengths Hasidim take to prevent abuse and molestation cases from going to trial. 

The story is long and the reporting is thorough. It describes intimidation, threats, and attempts to pay-off victims and witnesses to keep them from testifying.  Agudath Israel, and their dangerous, irresponsible policy on child abuse, also gets a mention:

"You can destroy a person's life with a false report," said Rabbi Chaim Dovid Zweibel, the executive vice president of Agudath Israel of America, a powerful ultra-Orthodox organization, which last year said that observant Jews should not report allegations to the police unless permitted to do so by a rabbi.

Rabbinic authorities "recommend you speak it over with a rabbi before coming to any definitive conclusion in your own mind," Rabbi Zweibel said.

Zweibel's policy is reprehensible, and part of the problem not the solution. He should be criticized from every pulpit and every blog by people who recognize his policy for what it is, namely, an attempt to protect rabbinic privileges and prerogatives at the expense of children. The Times' reporting makes it clear that Zweibel's approach is bankrupt by describing several cases in which the consulting Rabbi protected the perpetrator and by association his community's reputation at the victim's expense.

Though, I understand the traditional Jewish concerns about reputations and established Torah law, I'm nearing a breaking point. Every week, it seems, I hear a story about savage abuse in a cheder, some of it recent, some of it perpetrated years ago by people who are still teaching.

At what point do we concede that our deferential approach is not working? At what point do we say that our worrying about loshon hara is failing to keep children safe? When do we point at the rebbes and the mashgiachs and their gabbaim and say, you have failed to keep children safe? We need a Zola and a J'Accuse describing the widespread abuse in Hasidic schools and the indifference and hostility that victims suffer when they try to report it.  We need to drop the deference and the shuffling and the irrational fear of hereditary leaders and their imaginary magical powers and say the words that need to be said. We need to finally stand up, as a community, and say that we will no long allow children to be beaten in Hasidic schools

I'd write the call-to-arms myself, but my name carries no weight. I would be ignored like so many other wannabees have been ignored. This has to be written by someone who has the respect of the establishment, someone like Gil Student or Yaakov Horrowitz. And, as I've asked them both many times: What are you waiting for?

HT @marksofla and @krum

Search for more information about the scandal of child abuse in the UOJ community at4torah.com

Did Matisyahu Solomon put a child abuser in charge of the anti-Internet rally

The story of the day is that one Nechamiah Gotleib is the mastermind behind the Internet Asifa. The other story  of the day is that Gotleib is a viscous child abuser who routinely beat kids when he ran a school in Lakewood.

You can see the discussion and comments here and draw your own conclusions.  In short, many people are testifying that Gotleib has a long, ugly record as a child abuser but was nonetheless accepted by Matisyahu Solomon as the leader and main organizer of the anti-Internet rally. They are also alleging that Gotleib owns a filtering company and that he will benefit personally from the asifa.

If this is true, I say that Matisyahu Solomon, the Skullner Rebbe and anyone else who leaves his name on the promotional materials or otherwise associates himself with the Asifa should be given the Jimmy the Greek treatment--- and I hope Orthodox Jewry has the guts to do it (though I won't hold my breath.)

Search for more information about enough is enough at4torah.com

Obama to address gay marriage stance

Here's a sociology sidebar from a post on Character Grades about MadMen

You know what's hilarious? Peggy's Mom is religious and old fashioned and believes that her daughter moving in with a man without marrying him is immoral and unnatural. We the audience know that eventually Peggy's Mom and Her Kind will die and the idea of a young couple moving in together before getting married will become normal. We can also safely assume that this same phenomenon will occur in our generation as well. The people today who oppose gay marriage are going to die. They will be replaced by more open minded little Peggys and Abes and today's thorny issue will become tomorrow's norm. I think this is called progress.  

I bring this up, because Obama has given ABC an interview about gay marriage and speculation is rife that he is FINALLY going to stop being Peggy's Mom and offer support for same-sex marriage.

UPDATE: HE DID IT
WASHINGTON — President Obama on Wednesday ended nearly two years of “evolving” on the issue of same-sex marriage by publicly endorsing it in a television interview, taking a definitive stand on one of the most contentious and politically charged social issues of the day. “At a certain point, I’ve just concluded that for me personally it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same-sex couples should be able to get married,” Mr. Obama told ABC News in an interview that came after the president faced mounting pressure to clarify his position.


Search for more information about Obama at4torah.com

Lag B'omer Music

Ok, with the annual fast on music already over in the Middle East, its time for a a few words about the three, and pretty much only three, songs connected to the holiday

Bar Yochai

Format: Extremely long and  repetitive piyut, oddly beloved by people who tend to hate piyutim
Traditional tune: Beyond boring [Lets give credit to Moshe Skier for trying to improve it]
Overall DovBear ranking: Wow, does this song suck. I don't think even the best performer can make it bearable. Proof: SoulFarm are truly fantastic performers and their version isn't much good, though they can't be blamed for failing to make bearable something that is inherently unbearable.

L'kovod Hatana Ha'elokai

Format: Extremely long and repetitive piyut, oddly beloved by people who tend to hate piyutim
Traditional tune: Not bad
Overall DovBear ranking: A good song, that can be great in the hands of a talented artists. Unfortunately, I can't find such a performance on the Interwebs. You'll have to make do with this scratchy, difficult to enjoy  version, though it offers the added fun of dancing Hasidim

Omar R. Akiva

Source: Based on what is probably Rabbi Akiva's best, most famous and most important homily. See my discussion here.
Traditional tune: Awesome
Overall DovBear ranking: A great song, so great that even a terrible musician can't get it wrong. And boy are you in luck, because I have found a fantastic rendition of the song performed by some Hasidic musician in which he absolutely blows the doors off it. You're welcome. (Its just a shame that after about 3 minutes  it cuts short, and turns into UGH Bar Yochai)

Hey, are you hearing these songs for the first time? If so, I'm really curious to hear what you think of them. Please share your reactions in the thread.

Search for more information about ### at4torah.com

Yes, yes Republicans are peaceful, sane, sensible

Here are some recent signs of the crazy from ranking Republicans....

First up, Scott Boston, a St. Louis Tea Party activist, who stood up at a rally and recommended murdering Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO). “She walks around like she’s some sort of Rainbow Brite Care Bear or something but really she’s an evil monster,” he said. “We have to kill the Claire Bear,” he added. McCaskill's opponent Sarah Steelman (R) was in the audience when these words were spoken. As of yet, she has said nothing.

And, thanks to this anti-tax, anti-government genius, the police are providing McCaskill with additional police protection -- at tax payer expense.

Next we have Ponch McPhee, who edits a newsletter for the Republican Party of Greene County in Virginia. Here is what he published this month, beneath a charming recipe for "Conservative Potato and Egg Delight":

We have before us a challenge to remove an ideologue unlike anything world history has ever witnessed or recognized. . . . The ultimate task for the people is to remain vigilant and aware ~ that the government, their government is out of control, and this moment, this opportunity, must not be forsaken, must not escape us, for we shall not have any coarse[sic] but armed revolution should we fail with the power of the vote in November. This Republic cannot survive for 4 more years underneath this political socialist ideologue

Armed revolution? Has the Republican Party picked up the mantle of the Black Panthers?

See the screen grab after the jump

A guest post on the Baltimore Werdershiem verdict

by BJ

The judge was finally reached a verdict on the case of the two vigilante Shomrim who were accused of beating the shi.., er, "stuffing" out of a 15 year old black kid walking through northwest Baltimor'es "frumland." Actually, to be fair, only one of the accused was actually a member of the Shomrim at the time, and he is not longer a member of the organization. I have some interest in this matter, as I have lived in this neighborhood since 1979, and serve as a volunteer in the other citizen's watch patrol, which is keeping a very low profile, for good reason, I suppose.

Here's a link to the verdict from the local fish-wrapper:

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/breaking/bs-md-werdesheim-verdict-20120503,0,2736517.story

This was a bench trial, lawyers for the defendant didn't believe they could get a fair trial from a city jury, er, bamboozle a city jury to to find for their client, I mean. (Of course, part of tht problem is the frum Jews in Baltimore City do their damndest to get out of jury duty, and if they do have to come downtown, they'll do anything to keep from being assigned to a trial. I've seen this firsthand, so no arguments!)

In Favor of Lag B'Omer Trips

A Guest Post By E. Fink

Over on the Matzav, a letter that was posted before Lag B'Omer last year has been reposted without any mention that it is a rerun. Basic honesty and decency aside, they must have thought no one would realize. You can't fool me. I read and commented on this letter last year. I know this because I read the Matzav like Jon Stewart watches Fox News.

When they posted it last year I left some comments under my Matzav / VIN anono-name and I thought the letter writer had been eviscerated enough that Matzav would not dare publish the same letter again. I was wrong. So this time I am going all out. Here is a more snarky and detailed reply to the moron of the week. My commentary is in parenthesis.