Mrs. Mysogynist

I was cruising the Internet for recipes and devrei Torah when I came across this delightful instance of mysogyny:

As for the beginning of that paragraph -- the Gemara itself says that women are not supposed to be taught Torah sheba'al peh.

I think that anyone who says that that Gemara is not Torah miSinai - but is only a response to the surrounding culture of its time - has herself been influenced by the "surrounding non-Jewish influence" of /our/ time.

There have been very learned woman, but in each case -- be it Devorah or Bruriah -- she was very much an exception to the general run of Jewish women. How many female shoftim have there been? One. How many female tannaim? One. (If Bruriah counts.)

So while there does seem to be an allowance made for the exceptional circumstance, it is not the norm for women to be talmidei chachamim. Their exemption from the mitzva of limud Torah (except for the specific halachos they need to know) is, BTW, related to their exemption from other mitzvos that would interfere with their higher duties -- raising the next generation of Jews. --- A WOMAN WHO TEACHES SCHOOL

Oh, how moronic, and on so many many levels. Permit me to elaborate.

1 - There are Rishonim who wrote that the much of what we call the Gemara isn't "from Sinai." Logic suggests this as well. (After all, could every "Rabbi Yehuda amar" have been spoken at Sinai? Imagine what a hoot it would have been for Rabbi Yehuda to learn in school what his older self had been pre-destined to say.)

2 - Why does past performance predict future results? In the old days many forces conspired to produce few learned women. Those forces were not inherent to Judaism, and, happily, they have, for the most part, passed into oblivion. So why should women sell themselves short? Out of sentiment? Out of nostalgia for forces that no longer obtain?

3 - "The halachos they need to know?" That could fill a library, (not to mention much of Nashim.) So where are the schools committed to teaching women these laws, in all their detail?

4 - Anyway, it is not "the Gemara" that says what she's referring to. It's ben Azzai (I think), as quoted in the Gemara, and he only states one opinion amongst three. "The Gemara" does not take sides between the three opinions. But for some reason (hmmm what oh what could it be?) the "tiflus" opinion is the one that's become famous.

5 - Besides, how does this "woman who teaches school" know about Bruriah? Heavens. Did someone teach her Talmud?

What was the third meal?

Now that the days are getting shorter, I'm back to thinking that the third shabbos meal is really quite lame. Think about it. We're home from morning services at around noon and done with lunch at around 2 pm. Are we really supposed to sit down and shove still more food down our throats at 4:30? And this is the meal all the rabininc literature raves about? Makes no sense at all.

Also sensless is how Jews behave when Shabbos and Yom Tov (or erev Pesach) coincide. Because the Rabbis wrote ecstacticly about the third meal, Jews are loath to give it up. So they resort to fictions. For instance, last week, my own father-in-law bentched after the starter, sang a song, and then washed again for the main course. The last time Shabbos was erev Pesach he did the same thing. (On both occasions, I told him he was being ridiculous, and reminded him that he was performing a brocha she lo tzariach, but he doesn't listen to me.)

What's more likely is this: Once upon a time, Jews woke up early -even on shabbos - for services. They were home from shul before 9 AM, so the second shabbos meal was breakfast. Later in the day when everyone gathered for the Sabbath lunch, that was the third meal. And a third meal which isn't rushed, or squeezed between mincha and maariv, or eaten by people who are already bursting is something I can see the Rabbis being likely to celebrate. I can see it, because we have it. Only we call it the second meal.

Slow day

Sorry, true believers, but the blogging will be slow today. I'm otherwise occupied.

Meantime, why not enjoy some of the music of MoChassid? [You can hear samples of the songs by clicking here. ] This is good stuff. And, having listend to it myself, I finally understand Mo's contempt for Mordechai Ben David, et al.

Some comments you might have missed

Several prestigious commenters left important messages at the very bottom of last week's Jesus Camp thread.

(1) UNCLE MOISHY: After CWY swore on a bible that the first ammendment would forever protect the millions of Jews [*] who attend public school from being forced to worship Jesus our funny Uncle argued:

CWY's bit about depending on the 1st amendment to overcome the tyranny of a Christian Evangelical majority is, as someone already said, naive. In fact, it seems the Evangelicals have been using the 1st amendment to bolster their position, essentially by claiming that their 1st amendment right to practice religion would be infringed by banning prayer in school, teaching evolution and other scientific heresies, removing religious symbols from public display during xmas-season, etc.

[...]

There is also a... case that the Jewish media has picked up on about Jews in a small town in Delaware who have sued to prevent their kids from having Xtianity shoved down their throats in public school. IIRC, in one incident, a Xtian student leader made a public speech in which she prayed for her Jewish classmate to find the right path. The bottom line for this family is that the lawsuits haven't done them any good and they've had to relocate to Wilmington, the nearest (presumably more tolerant) big city. I have to believe that this is closer to the norm wherever fundamentalist Christians are the majority.

(2) APPLE: Following a few poorly considered remarks from Joe and Akiva about how liberals are corrupting society, Apple said:

"The surrounding culture is a product of the market. People want it, so businesses provide it. No political party is ADVOCATING it."

With this remark, Apple put his finger on an essential conservative mistake. Conservative like to pretend that liberals are in favor of smutty adverts, and violent video games, but in reality they favor nothing but freedom and tolerance. The smutty ads and violent video games offend us, too, but we'd rather live in a world that has them, then a world where conservative Christian overlords have the power to impose their beliefs and practices on us.

If you think it couldn't happen, go visit that town in Delaware. Or listen closely the next time someone like Dobson or Ihofe speaks.

[*] Yes, millions. We have 5 million Jews in America, and only about 300,000 children in Jewish schools. Where are the rest?

Cliff Floyd's Boozy Blog

The Met's left-fielder pulled a hammy over the weekend, and is expected to miss the rest of the post-season. On his blog, though, Floyd, is more optimistic. [Cliff Floyd's Playoff Blog: I'll be all right ... I hope]

Here's his treatment plan: "I’ll just rub some champagne on it and see, or I’ll have a few beers. Maybe a few more, and by the time I get to Wednesday, I’ll be good to go."

L'chayim, Cliff. And kol hakovod to the suits who run the Mets for allowing this to be published. Lesser men at lesser organizations would have spiked it -or polished it up - due to concerns about their reputation for being "family-friendly." The Mets approach is honest and authentic and one I hereby salute.

Winner in the Best Hair category

Kim Jong-il

Jesus Camp

A close friend from the real world writes:

Anyone see Jesus Camp? I picked up a bootleg copy last week (they're selling it on the street here!) and it's quite an interesting film. Some thoughts:

1. From a purely film-making perspective, it was fantastic. Gorgeous shots, nice editing, great use of music, humorous moments.

2. Whoa. These people are just...whoa.

3. Cute kids...

4. ...who there but for the grace of God *aren't* in Hamas camp.

5. However you slice it, these kids are not being taught to kill people. But if they were, then they would. And that is scary.

6. Speaking in tongues (even if put on) is unintentionally hilarious.

7. One preacher guy likes to shokel a lot. I wonder if it comes natural to him or he saw it in Israel or something.

8. A family pledges allegiance to "the Christian flag" and there is also an Israeli flag nearby.

9. In all my years at Orthodox functions, whether for kids or adults, whether kumzitzin or Yom Kippur Neilah, or presentations by Gedolai Yisroel, I have NEVER seen the intensity and religous devotion, or at least the cosmetic appearance of such as here.

10. I get the impression that there is some distortion. For example, one gets the impression that these kids are talking and thinking about Jesus all day. Maybe they are, but maybe not. For example, they show them telling ghost stories at night. Granted, a counselor comes in and asks them if they think telling ghost stories is godly. But I wonder if these kids are "on" part of the time, like when they're having their pep rallies/ prayers and just a lot more normal the rest of the time. One kid talks about having read Harry Potter, because his dad lets but his mom doesn't (child of divorce).

11. Total racial integration (although mostly white). It's obvious that for them its Christians and non-Christians not black or Asian or white or whatever.

12. I get the feeling that its a bit alarmist--but the situation is still alarming nevertheless. It is clear that these people, perhaps 10s of million of them, are not necessarily commited to democracy *if* they ever achieve most of the political power to be had.

13. See it.

----

Here's what worries me most about these people:

(1) Their love for Israel is conditional. They like Israel because they think it's reshis tzmichas ha-rapture, that the esstablishment of the state and the ingathering of the exiles fulfils the pre-conditions of the rapture. My worry is that sooner or later the Christians will notice the rapture hasn't happened. And then who do you think they will blame?

(2) Unlike most Republicans, the evangelicals aren't Liberals, in the original, capital L, sense. They don't have much use for nicities like freedom of the press, freedom of religion, and so on. If they ever acquire the power some of them crave, they will seek to impose their rules on the rest of us, and to inhibit the free exercise of our rules. You might not think that's much of a problem, but what happens when your wife needs a halachicly mutar abortion, and the Christian overlords refuse to allow it? What happens when they seek to ban your gay son from public service, or to otherwise stigmitize him? What happens when they try to impose the worship of Jesus on the millions of Jewish children attending public schools?

A friend indeed

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) thinks the government should stop funding cameras and other security measures for Jewish organizations.

Yes, you read that correctly. Both the part about him wanting to endanger Jewish synagouges and community centers, and the part about him being a Republican are correct.

Memo to Rabbi Yitzhak Alderstan: We can handle the truth!

The following sentance appears at the top of Rabbi Yitzhak Alderstan's latest post about biblical archeology:

"Where some people – perhaps wisely – stayed away from disciplines considered hostile to traditional beliefs..."

Ahh, the familiar fetishization of "traditional beliefs" Doesn't the man realize that "traditional beliefs" were different in every time and place? (For instance, Rav Hirsch's "traditional beliefs" accomodated evolution) Doesn't he realize that Judaism is a gift from God and therefore has nothing to fear from facts, evidence and arguments?

Let the biblical archeologists dig. Let them and the palentologists and the linguists and the rest of the acadamy compose their theories and make their arguments. If what they are saying is true it will prevail, and Judaism by defintion will adjust itself to the new facts.

Related

Arguing with GOPers

Among the false gods of the Jewish Republican panthenon are these common errors:

1 - Republicans are more moral then Liberals
2 - Democrats are against morality
3 - The Torah more closely coincides with republican values
4 - Bill Clinton was the most evil man to walk the earth since Hitler
5 - The New York Times lies like the rest of us breath
6 - Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Ladin planned 9/11 over a game of
golf (some hold Kerry (or possibly Howard Dean) was the caddie)
7 - George Bush knows what he is doing.
8 - The 'market' is magic

Because it's pretty easy to show that all of this is false, defeating a Republican Jew on the field of argument is usually a cakewalk.

The Death that Saved Europe

I recently read a great What If essay that argues we'd all be speaking mongolese if the Khan hadn't been gathered unto his fathers at a most inconvenient time. In 1241, having destroyed the Christian armies of central Europe, the Mongol hordes were poised to take Vienna when the messenger came calling them back for the shiva. No Christian army in Europe was a match for the horde; had they continued their march West, the Mongols would have reached Paris.

In short, the West dodged a bullet.

Had the Mongols swept through Europe destroying everything in their path, as was their habit, we'd have no capitalism and no renaissance, no enlightenment and no rights of man, no Yeshivas and no Hasidim, no habeas corpus and no freedom of speech. All the small, fledgling 13th century ideas that, in the fullness of time, grew into what we call "Western Civilization" would have been snuffed out in the cradle. Political and technological developments we take for granted would have been retarded by several centuries - if they ever emerged at all.

For an idea of how the West might have ended up if the Mongol's march of destruction hadn't been prematurely cancled, consider what happened to Islam. The Muslim world met the Mongols in 1240, and much of it was reduced to rubble over the course of a summer. Almost 2 million dead in Nishpaar; 1.5 million in Heret and nearly a million in Samarkand, with many many smaller cities completely obliterated.

Before the horde came, Bagdhad was the world's greatest seat of learning and a place of commerce and art. In six weeks the Mongols reduced this great city to a killing field, murdering over 1 million people, together with the infant Muslim universities and scholars that may have ultimately produced an Islamic Enlightenment, and with it a liberal east.

Oy meh haya lonu.

Bugs in the Barley!

I was enjoying a daydream yesterday when, I remembered a teshuva about worms and aged cheese. The ruling was that any worms that had hatched *on* the cheese were both kosher and milchig. The reason given, IIRC, was that the worms never touched anything but cheese, (thought at the time I thought the author of the teshuva may have been under the misaprehension that the worms had generated spontaneously from the cheese.)

Also, the fact that the worms were both kosher and milchig, was given as the reason for waiting 6 hours after eating aged cheese. Its because along with the cheese, you'd presumably eat "meat" ie: the worms.

I bring this up because yesterday a friend [*] sent me some shocking news: Barley in now treif

This new teaching is suggested in the CrC's latest Kashrus alert:

It has come to our attention that packages of barley, such as those used for soup or cholent, may contain larva, insects or even live worms! This problem is not isolated to any specific brand or store. It is strongly suggested that each package of barley, or other similar grains, be inspected prior to use.G'Mar Tov! Please Post.

Live worms! In the barley! Oh My!

Our sainted ancestors had it much worse of course. Our food is cleaner than food has ever been in all of human history. The ancestors didn't have pesticides or sealed containers. They didn't have screens and their houses were full of cracks. In short, there once were bugs in everything, and by the truckload.

So what did the sainted ancestors do? Did they close their eyes and pretend the bugs weren't there? Did they behave like 21st century Americans and subject everything to thorough and time-consuming examinations?

Or did they invent eleborate justifications like the teshuva cited above?

[*] He's someone known to the jewish blogging community. If he gives me permission, I'll share his name.

Politics as Usual

It sounds like something from an ABC docudrama (Path to Pedophilia?) but House Speaker Dennis "Fat Dennis" Hastert really is blaming the "liberals" for the Foley mess.

For those of you not in the know, Fat Dennis protected a predator to save a House seat for the Republicans. For years Congressman Mark Foley (R-FL)got his jollies sending disugusting email and text messages to underage Congressional pages. Congressional Republicans knew about it as early as 2001 and Hastert himself knew about it last spring, but all followed the code of Omerta. Foley was permitted to stay in Congress and to remain chairman of the House caucus on missing and exploited children until ABC news published some of the messages.

Now, however, Hastert is telling everyone who will listen that the scheming liberals are behind it all. They are the ones who forced Foley to abandon a floor vote for cybersex, I guess, and they also supplied the voices in Hastert's head that ordered him to keep it quiet until after the election. Though I appreciate the compliment (Liberals = Masters of the Universe! Hey, we even caused Condi and Little George to ignore that Osama fella.) it's rather suprising that the party of personal responsibility is so quick to point the finger of blame at other people. This is one more episode that puts the lie to their moral seriousness.

Note: Like you, I hope that Dennis Hastert loses his position as speaker of the house but we also have the opportunity (obligation) to fire him. Please consider donating to his challenger: John Laesch http://www.john06.com/

Obligatory troll noise: But, but, but, but, but, but, but CLINTON!

Today's reading

Today's selection is the end of Leon Eiseley's The Brown Wasps an essay about nostalgia and how our senses of place and self can be rooted in fantasy and false rememberances. Eisley dreamed of a non-existant tree. I dream of a shul and a congregation which no longer exist - and perhaps never did.

--

I have said my life has been passed in the shade of a nonexistent tree... It was planted sixty years ago by a boy with a bucket and a toy spade in a little Nebraska town. That boy was myself. It was a cottonwood sapling and the boy remembered it because of some words spoken by his father and because everyone died or moved away who was supposed to wait and grow old under its shade. The was passed from hand to hand, but the tree for some intangible reason had taken root in his mind. It was under its branches that he sheltered; it was from this tree that his memories, which are my memories, let away into the world.

After sixty years the mood of the brown wasps grows heavier upon one. During a long inward struggle I thought it would do me good to go and look upon that actual tree. I found a rational excuse in which to clothe this madness. I purchased a ticket and at the end of the two thousand miles I walked another mile to an address that was still the same. The house had not been altered.

I came close to the white picket fence and reluctantly, with great effort, looked down the long vista of the yard. There was nothing there to see. For sixty years that cottonwood had been growing in my mind. Season by season its seeds had been floating farther on the hot prairie winds. We had planted it lovingly there, my father and I, because he had a great hunger for soil and live things growing, and because none of these things had long been ours to protect. We had planted the little sapling and watered it faithfully, and I remembered that I had run out with my small bucket to drench its roots the day we moved away. And all the years since it had been growing in my mind, a huge tree that somehow stood for my father and the love bore him. I took a gasp on the picket fence and force myself to look again.

A boy with the hard bird eye of youth pedaled a tricycle slowly up beside me.

"What'cha lookin' at?" he asked curiously.

"A tree," I said.

"What for?" he said.

"It isn't there," I said, to myself mostly, and began to walk away at a pace just slow enough not to seem to be running.

"What isn't there?" the boy asked. I didn't answer. It was obvious I was attached by a thread to a thing that had never been there, or certainly not for long. Something that had to be held in the air, or sustained in the mind, because it was part of my orientation in the universe and I could not survive without it. There was more than an animal's attachment to a place. There was something else, the attachment of the spirit of a grouping of events in time; it was part of our mortality.

So I had come home at last, driven by a memory in the brain as surely as the field mouse who had delved long ago in my flower pot or the pigeons flying forever in the midst the rattle of nut-vending machines. These, the burrow under the greenery in my living room and the red- bellied bowls of peanuts now hovering in midair in the minds of pigeons, were all part of an elusive world that existed nowhere and yet everywhere. I looked once at the real world about me while the persistent boy pedaled at my heels.

It was without meaning, through my feet took a remembered path. In sixty years the house and street had rotted out of my mind. But the tree, the tree that longer was, that had perished in its first season, bloomed on in my individual mind, unblemished as my father's words. "We'll plant a tree here, son, and we're not going to move any more, And when you're an old, old man you can sit under it and think how we planted it here, you and me, together."

I began to outpace the boy on the tricycle.

"Do you live here, Mister?" he shouted after me suspiciously. I took a firm grasp on airy nothing--to be precise, on the bole of the great tree. "I do," I said. I spoke for myself, one field mouse, and several pigeons. We were all out of touch but somehow permanent. It was the world that had changed.

PSA

Hi DB, Shana tova.

Is it possible that you could pose a question to your audience/readership for me? I was wondering if observant types (including you!), buy non-heckshered frozen products (vegetables, fruit, etc.) -- with the whys and whynots.

Kol tov,
WBS

---

I don't. Mostly because I am a lazy coward.

Results

Judging from the thread on the previous post, most of us miss the synagouge music of our youth. I also heard, by email, from a guy who grew up on a kibbutz, and now prays with the hasidim. He writes

When you grow up, you realize that nothing stays the same. Even if I went back to the kibbutz, it would never be the same. The people have moved or died. We could sing the same songs, but it still wouldn't be anything like what I remember. The people who made it what I remember are gone. We move on, but still I have moments of being homesick.

Perhaps there is an evolutionary biologist who can explain why our memories give extra weight to the spiritual experiences of our youth. Intellectually, I know the songs we sing in my "new" shul (where I've prayed for 12 years) are every bit as good as the songs we sang in the shul I attended for 5 years when I was a child. Emotionally, though, I long for the old days, and I sing the old songs in a whisper, and rage privately at the new songs. I imagine even the atheists in the audience will confess to this peculiar nostalgia. But where does it come from?

Yom Kippur Post Mortum (And what time did you finish?)

We started at 8 a.m Our first break was at 12:30, and the second was at 4:15. We finished a little late, but big deal: No one starved.

Do those of you who've reached your thirties and forites find yourselves mourning, on Yom Kippur, for the shuls where you grew up? It's very strange, but now that I'm into my thirties, I miss the old songs more than ever. For reasons I can't fathom, the shul I attended from ages 7 to 11 is more valuable in my eyes than the shul I've used for the last 10 years. The songs I sang as a child mean more to me than the songs I learned as an adult. How come?

On the walk home from Kol Nidrei I found myself next to an old, old man, a refugee from Vienna. I asked him: "Were the songs we sang tonight anything like the songs you sang in Europe."

"No. No." he said. "In Vienna we went always to a big shul, a big shul with a chior and still those songs sometimes come back to me."

We're all haunted, I guess.