Best Frum Headline ever?

Phillip the Great sends us this ray of sunlight:

Tremendous Arousal Following Women's Rally to Fortify Walls of Taharoh;

That's an actual headline now showing on an actual frum blog. We do not kid.

By the way, belated props to DVD for giving us such a fine "window into the Charedi world" As you expected, and as this picture makes clear, all Charedim wear shtreimals, all the time. The men sit around grinning out the window and the kids - two per family! - are always well-dressed, happy, and content... and, in Haredi-land, there are no woman to be found.

Thanks Deih Ve-dibur for giving us this awesome window into the Charedi world! We're sure your articles are equally enlightening!

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Scalia prejudges the DOMA case

How do you think Justice Scalia will rule in the two gay marriage cases he is set to hear this term? Well, here's a clue:

If we cannot have moral feelings against homosexuality, can we have it against murder? Can we have it against other things?"

Now, as per the AP "Scalia said he is not equating sodomy with murder but drawing a parallel between the bans on both" but his argument is still unbefitting a Supreme Court Justice.

We haven't banned murder due to our "moral feelings". We've banned murder because it takes a human life and causes tangible damage to a non-consenting victim. We've banned murder because its disruptive to civilized society. We've banned murder because we'd never get any work done if we were forever worried about being capped by an angry co-worker. None of that can be said about sodomy or gay marriage.

Scalia is correct when he says we're entitled to our moral feelings. I agree that any moral feeling is legitimate. I, for example, have every right be morally opposed to fat justices of Italian descent.  But we don't get to ban things just because we find them icky. 

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A note to well-meaning gentiles.

Dear Well-meaning Gentiles:

As much as I appreciate your warm holiday greetings, it disappoints me to be wished a "season of peace and joy" This is your season of peace and joy, not mine. Telling me that you want the Hanukkah season to bring me "peace and joy" is a bit like me wishing you a Happy New Year on Labor Day. It makes no sense. Caveat Loquens.

I also thank you for the Hanukkah-themed piece of junk you brought me. Nothing cheers my spirit like a plastic top that plays that classic song about the dreidal made from clay. Perhaps I'll reciprocate next week, by sending you a jolly elf that plays Jingle Bells when you tickle its stomach. Won't that be fun!

Unfortunately, I do not have what you called a "Hanukkah table" upon which to display your gift. Yes, you're right: It would look nice hanging from a tree. Only I do not have one. Remember?

That's all. Appreciate the thought, but not the effort.

Your buddy,

Dov Bear




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My only Weberman comment

Inadvertently deleted this post. Its recreated below with the only comments I could save.

As you may have noticed, I've not said much of anything about the Weberman trial. This is because I think this case is unremarkable. Men, unfortunately, are arrested and convicted for crimes such as this all the time. Kolko's arrest was something new under the sun. This wasn't. Call me jaded, but I can't make a big blogging commotion every time a Jewish person stands trial. Even the allegations about community cover-ups, or witness intimidation, or rabbis saying stupid things were old hat. Seen that, done that. Ho hum.

Which brings me to my one little comment. I keep hearing people say that poor Mister Weberman was convicted "without a stitch of evidence." Excuse me? He may have been convicted without a stitch of scientific evidence, but his victim was on the stand for four days. Everything she said counts as evidence. And the jury accepted that evidence and found it credible.

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too many hats

Guest post by anonymous

As readers of this blog are aware, our host is not among the big fans of multitasking Kosher restaurants—pizzerias that sell sushi, delis that dabble in Chinese, and so on. However, until someone else can top a French “Croissanterie and Chocolaterie” with a full Chinese menu that also offers Middle Eastern and Moroccan items, “Authentic Kentucky Fried Chicken,” and Montreal smoked meat, I think that we have reached the pinnacle.

For those without an atlas handy, the only missing continents are Antarctica, South America, and Australia. Penguin Mole with a Foster’s lager and we’re good to go.

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More Jewish Borowing

Jews have always borrowed songs, dances, clothing, names,and yes, even ideas, from other cultures. We've been doing it since the earliest days of the faith. And the most remarkable things is that even as it continues to happen, some Jews piously swear that it has never happened and never will happen. In fact, we're right in the middle of a holiday obstentiously dedicated to the proposition that Judaism can't ever be infected by foreign influences.

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The Court Takes a DOMA Case

The Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case that should make it perfectly clear that DOMA has to go. It involves a same-sex couple that legally married under New York law after having been together for more than 30 years. Soon after the marriage, one partner took ill and died leaving the surviving partner with a 300K|+ tax bill, a tax bill that would have been avoided had the partners been opposite sex.

At stake isn't the "redefinition of marriage" but two important principles:

(1) States should be able to make their own laws without Federal interference.
(2) There should not be two sets of laws. Men and women should not be treated differently by the state.

Irrespective of any prejudices you may hold against people who approach love in ways that you do not, this seems like an easy case. If I can demonstrate straight love and support for someone for 30+ years and inherit her wealth without any legal hassles, the same right should be extended to people who demonstrate gay love and support.

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Chag Urim or Chanukka?

Earlier, a young haredi gentleman on my Twitter feed let it be known that newfangled holiday greetings make him mad. But his lights (ha!) there are only two proper ways to to say hello to someone on Chanuka. "What the hell is Chag urim??" he said. "why isn’t Chanukah sameach or freilichin Chanukah enough lol."

There is an irony in his preference. Two thousand years ago, two writers mentioned Hannuka. The Jewish writer called it Lights, while the Christian writer referred to it as Dedication.

The Christian Writer

Writing in around 70CE the author of the Gospel of John told-over a maase shehoya about Jesus and the disbelieving Jews*:

Then came the Festival of Dedication [i.e. Hanukkah] at Jerusalem. It was winter, and Jesus was in the temple courts walking in Solomon’s Colonnade. The Jews who were there gathered around him, saying, “How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Messiah, tell us plainly.” Jesus answered, “I did tell you, but you do not believe. The works I do in my Father’s name testify about me,  but you do not believe because you are not my sheep. My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all; no one can snatch them out of my Father’s hand. 30 I and the Father are one.” --- NIV

*Of course Jesus would have recognized no distinction between himself and "the Jews". The fact that John makes such a distinction provides us with a clue about the book's date, and also about its author's attitude towards Jews.  

In this darling little tale, John's Jews are doubting Jesus, who denounces his opponents as disbelievers. The story, I speculated here, is set at Hanukkah time to make a polemical point. By the time John wrote his book the body of Jesus, which offered atonement and salvation, was understood by Christians to be the "new Temple." In John's story, we see a group of Jews at the holiday of the Temple Dedication who are too blind and too stubborn to recognize and dedicate this "new" Temple. 

The Jewish Writer

Though Hanukkah, the name for the holiday that John uses, appears in 1 Maccabees, Megilat Tannit and later Rabbinic works, it wasn't the only holiday name in use. According to Josephus, a halacha-following Jew who wrote at around the same time,  the Jews he knew called the holiday  "Phota" or "Lights" 

...and from that time to this we celebrate this festival, and call it Lights [phôta] I suppose the reason was, because this liberty beyond our hopes appeared to us [or "came to light" =phanênai] and that thence was the name given to that festival. - Antiquities 7

Interestingly, Josephus does not seem to know the reason for the name "Lights", suggesting he was unaware of the miracle of the lamp.  

 

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Count the things wrong with this comment:

A moment ago I found this little comment on my blog

Remember, Onkelos is NOT a Pirush. Onkelos represents the authentic Masoretic translation. As a Ger who was learning initially with the children, he faithfully recorded how words were translated by the Tanoim. His is not his own Drush, so to speak.

I count at least six things wrong with it:

(1) Every translation, Onkelos included, is a pirush or interpretation. You can't translate without interpreting.
(2) There was never an "authentic Masoretic translation." Tannaim, remember, disagree about the meaning of words on virtually every page of the Talmud Bavli.
(3) The tradition, FWIW, says Onkelos follows Rabbi Eliezer's reading. Not one "official" interpreation.
(5) The Masoretes were scribes and scholars who did their work 6-10 centuries after Onkelos died.
(6) If Onkelos really is the official, true, authentic, translation, how is it that so many Rishonim and Achronim found the nerve to disagree with him?

Did I miss anything?

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REPARATIVE THERAPY FOR HOMOSEXUALITY: A CONSTRUCTED CONVERSATION

By @azigra

The Southern Poverty Law Center: "Conversion therapy has been discredited or highly criticized by all major American medical, psychiatric, psychological and professional counseling organizations.The cost of conversion therapy to gay men and lesbians may be nothing less than emotional devastation. They may spend years recovering from the trauma inflicted upon them." 

VIN commentator "Truth": "It's actually organizations like JONAH that want them to be able to live in the next world!"
Chaim Levin: "I grew up in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, in the religious orthodox community and when I was 17 I was aware of the fact I was gay, I was attracted to other men and I was hopeless, so when I came across this organization JONAH it was wonderful because the philosophy I grew up with was that human desires can be overcome, any desire"

VIN commentator"inNY": "So all these gays who keep on complaining, become a GOY and do what u like, but our Torah says clearly Gay is an Isur Deoraias. The fact is the Jewish gay community has no answer to that."  

Michael Fergeson: "Among the bizarre exercises I participated in [at JONAH] I was part of a group that formed a human barricade and on the other side of that were a pair of oranges meant to represent another man's testicles and there was a participant in the exercise who was supposed to break through the barricade and grab the oranges and was instructed to squeeze them and drink the juice from them and shove them down his pants"

VIN commentator"raizy": "Though the methods used for this particular therapy may be questionable, even harmful, there is much to be said about undergoing therapy for SSA."

Chaim Levin: "During my last session with the councilor at JONAH on JONAH's premises the councilor  who is unlicensed he goes by the term life coach, he is not licences by the APA or the AMA, he basically manipulated me into taking my clothes off in front of a mirror [behind] a locked door with him and then he insisted that I fondle myself"

VIN commentator "Truth": "And there are plenty of success stories in conversion therapy. No psychotherapy is 100% effective. The libs in this country are trying to outlaw this like in California. Why? Because the libs believe in thought control. "How dare you disagree with those that now say Homosexuality isn't a mental illness?" 

Benjamin Unger: "I spoke to Arthur Goldberg who was the director of JONAH and I asked him about JONAH and he said straight out we can turn you from gay to straight....you can be from homosexual all the way to heterosexual, and I was ecstatic, I said wow the cure is here I finally found it."

VIN commentator "Anonymous": "Were they forced into this? Did they pay for it and are not happy with the result so they want their money back?.....More headline grabbing by activist gays and shyster attorneys......What is it about the gay mentality that they have to always fight and be in the news?" 

Benjamin Unger:  “During my time with JONAH, they told me constantly that my mom had made me gay. I was so convinced that I refused to have any contact with her for several months, which caused a great deal of damage to our relationship.”  -

VIN commentator "Anonymous": "They should suffer their condition quietly and leave the rest of the world alone." 

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Why is Yosef called the Ben Zekunim? (Isn't Binyamin younger)

Let's begin with the verse, Genesis 37:3:

וְיִשְׂרָאֵל אָהַב אֶת־יֹוסֵף מִכָּל־בָּנָיו כִּי־בֶן־זְקֻנִים הוּא לֹו וְעָשָׂה לֹו כְּתֹנֶת פַּסִּים
Now Israel loved Joseph more than any of his other sons, because he was a ben zekunim to him, and he made a richly ornamented robe for him. (NIV)

The major English translations take ben zekunim as "son of his old age", "born to him in his old age" or similar. However, as just about everyone has pointed out, Jacob already  had a son who was even younger: Benjamin. Why wasn't Benjamin also beloved as a son of his old age? In fact, later Benjamin himself is called a yeled zekunim who "his father loves very much"  (Gen 44:20

For that matter, asks Ramban, what about the other ten sons? They, also, were born when Jacob was very old. Technically, even Reuben was a "son of his old age."

Onkelos addresses the problem with some slight of hand. Instead of reading "son of old age", he reads "wise son", likely drawing on the use elsewhere of zkn to denote wisdom. Tellingly, when Benjamin is later called a yeled zekunim Onkelos reads it literally. 

On our verse, Rashi first gives the literal translation then, likely due to the problems we have already noted, gives Onkelos's suggestion.  The idea here is that Jacob loved Josef most because he was the smartest son. If ben zekunim simply means "smart son" then we can't ask why Josef, and not Benjamin, was given that appellation.

Other possibilities:

Ben zekunim is a title, referring to the son who attends to his father, as opposed to the yeled zekunim which is a son born when his father is old. . If Joseph was his father's "body man" it helps explain why he was left behind when the other went with the sheep to Shchem. Earlier, Ibn Ezra writes that וְהוּא נַעַר אֶת־בְּנֵי בִלְהָה וְאֶת־בְּנֵי זִלְפָּה means that the sons of the maidservants treated Joseph like a servant, or na'ar (Abraham's servants are also called na'ar) Perhaps the sons of the lower status wives saw that Joseph acted as his father's servant and treated him that way, too? (I think this is one of the Targums. Not sure.)

Joseph was the ben zekunim, or youngest, for a relatively long time. He and his other ten brothers were born within seven years of each other; then eight years passed before Benjamin was born. Having gotten used to thinking of Joseph as the baby of the family, the brothers and their father found it difficult to shake this perspective after Benjamin arrived. (This might be Ibn Ezra. Its not mine)

A ben zekunim isn't merely the youngest son. Its also a youngest son who is best loved. In Jacob's view, Benjamin was always associated with the death of his favorite wife. As a result, he never bonded with his youngest son, or developed the affection for him that is typically associated with a ben zekunim. (I think this is Chizkuni)

Benjamin wasn't born yet. Support for this comes from Yaakov's own words when he asks his son: נָבוֹא אֲנִי וְאִמְּךָ וְאַחֶיךָ לְהִשְׁתַּחֲוֹת לְךָ אָרְצָה / Will I, and your mother, and your brother come and bow to you? The famous interpretation is that Jacob is pooh-pooing the dream on the grounds that Joseph's mother is dead. As Rashi puts it: Therefore, he said,“Will [we]come, etc.” Just as it is impossible for your mother, so is the rest meaningless.  However, its actually more straightforward to take Yaakov's words at face value. He mentions Joseph's mother because she, like the brothers, is still alive. And if Rachel is still alive, Benjamin hasn't been born yet. And if Benjamin hasn't been born yet, we don't have to ask  why Josef, and not Benjamin, was called the ben zekunim

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Can God become human? No.

Once again, I find myself embroiled in a (fun) Twitter argument, regarding something that seems obvious and elementary to me. This time the fight is with a trio of Chabadniks, and the point I am trying to make is that God can't become human (See Note Below)

The first piece of evidence I attempted to enter was Rambam, Yesodai Hatorah 1:7 which reads as follows:

ואלוהינו ברוך שמו, הואיל וכוחו אין לו קץ ואינו פוסק, שהרי הגלגל סובב תמיד, אין כוחו כוח גוף. והואיל ואינו גוף, לא יארעו מאורעות הגופות כדי שיהא נחלק ונפרד מאחר; לפיכך אי אפשר שיהיה אלא אחד. וידיעת דבר זה--מצות עשה, שנאמר "ה' אלוהינו, ה' אחד"

The Chabad website gives the following translation (of the entire piece, which I did not include above):

This God is one. He is not two or more, but one, unified in a manner which [surpasses] any unity that is found in the world; i.e., He is not one in the manner of a general category which includes many individual entities, nor one in the way that the body is divided into different portions and dimensions. Rather, He is unified, and there exists no unity similar to His in this world. 

If there were many gods, they would have body and form, because like entities are separated from each other only through the circumstances associated with body and form. 

Were the Creator to have body and form, He would have limitation and definition, because it is impossible for a body not to be limited. And any entity which itself is limited and defined [possesses] only limited and defined power. Since our God, blessed be His name, possesses unlimited power, as evidenced by the continuous revolution of the sphere, we see that His power is not the power of a body. Since He is not a body, the circumstances associated with bodies that produce division and separation are not relevant to Him. Therefore, it is impossible for Him to be anything other than one. 

The knowledge of this concept fulfills a positive commandment, as [implied by Deuteronomy 6:4]: "[Hear, Israel,] God is our Lord, God is one.

Key Takeaways:

1) God is One and we are commanded to accept that he is One

2) From the fact that He is One it follows that he can never be anything else.

3) Were He to take a human form, He would cease to be One, as a human is "divided into different portions and dimensions"; furthermore

4) God is all powerful. Were He to take a human form, He would cease to be all powerful, as humans are not all powerful, therefore:

4) God can never take a human form.  

Really, it should have ended here. Right? Could Rambam be any clearer?  But instead the Chabadniks entered a pair of silly objections.

First, they presented a variation on the omnipotence paradox, claiming that the Rambam was limiting God. 

They said (paraphrase): "If God is omnipotent  that means he can do anything, taking a human from included." 

The problem here is that they misunderstand and misuse the word "omnipotent." When we say God is omnipotent we don't mean that he can do anything at all. What we mean is he can do anything that is actually possible. For instance, God can't create a female stallion. By definition, a stallion is male. A female stallion is no longer a stallion. Such a thing can't exist. Its a formal contradiction. The idea, therefore, of a "female stallion" is meaningless.  Similarly God, by definition, is One. A God that is human is no longer One and, therefore, no longer God. A "human God," like a "female stallion," is meaningless. 

Next, they attempted to argue that the world we know and understand is subject to being changed at God's will so though it may be true that right now that there can't be any such thing as a female stallion or a human God, our omnipotent God can make up new rules, should he wish, under which such things are possible. Here is how @bentzyshemtov put it (over several tweets) 

...in the context Rambam is saying that Gd isnt "currently" "only a person", but it doesn't say anywhere that he can't be if He wishes to do so....Difference between "isn't" and "can't ever be".  [When Rambam said] "can't ever b" [he means] due to the *current* "rules" which He created and therefore can change any moment. [Rambam] said: אי אפשר, but that is within the parameters and constraints of our "current" system. All of that can be altered at His will

At the end of Inherit the Wind, Mathew Brady makes the same point with more eloquence, saying, "Natural law was born in the mind of the Creator. He can change it—cancel it—use it as he pleases!"  but all this does is push off the question. What difference does it make if God becomes human before or after he changes the rules of the universe? The problem still stands: If God is One he can't be human, as a human being isn't One. And if @bentzyshemtov is suggesting that the new rules of the universe will allow for a new, currently impossible to fathom definition of the word human, then @bentzyshemtov is still conceding that God can't become human, as under the new rules a human, perforce, isn't actually a human at all!

Old Universe Rules

A human can't be One; therefore God can't become human

Proposed New Universe Rules

A human can be One; therefore God can become human

The Fallacy

The new rules "human" isn't what we understand as human as, by definition, a human can't be One. This new rules human is something else, something that goes by the name human, something that is One. As a result, the old point (that God can't be anything but One) remains true

Note below:  I don't want to put together a whole big disclaimer but yeah, of course, its true that some bold names say God really can be human. I think the Rambam's argument defeats them.

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Why do we keep asking the Bes Yosef's Question?

Judah Mac as he appears
on the Sistine Chapel's ceiling

Nicely done, True Believers! Yesterdays list of Things I Wish Orthodox Jews Would Stop Believing was tres awesome. In the fullness of time, I will compile your suggestions into an official DovBear post. For now, here's something seasonal upon which you can chew.

 I Wish Orthodox Jews Would Stop Believing....

...that the Bes Yosef's Question is a good question

On the off chance, there's a newbie in the audience who is unfamiliar with this chestnut  here's a brief summary, presented in terse, outline form:

1 - Famously, the Bes Yosef asks: If the Maccabees had sufficient oil for one day, why is Hanukkah celebrated for 8 days, and not 7? (The first day of light wasn't a miracle.)

2 - This is an excellent question... until you're given the correct answer*, which is right there in the Book of Maccabees in plain, not-so-easy-to-understand Krone Greek. 

It happened that on the same day on which the sanctuary had been profaned by the foreigners, the purification of the sanctuary took place, that is, on the twenty-fifth day of the same month, which was Kislev. They celebrated it for eight days with rejoicing, in the manner of the Festival of Booths [Sukkot], remembering how not long before, during the Festival of Booths, they had been wandering in the mountains and caves like wild animals. Therefore, carrying ivy-wreathed wands and beautiful branches and also fronds of palm [=lulavim], they offered hymns of thanksgiving to him who had given success to the purifying of his own holy place. They decreed by public edict, ratified by vote, that the whole nation of the Jews should observe these days each year. -- The New Oxford Annotated Apocrypha (Augmented Third Edition)

* I cast no aspersions on the Bes Yosef here. Its doubtful he had Greek or Latin and therefore would have been unable to read the Book of Maccabees. If you think this means I am saying that "he's dumb," I can't help you. 

3 - As you can see, the Maccabees created Hanukkah as an 8-day holiday because they were celebrating a delayed Sukkot. During the Greek occupation  Jews couldn't get to the Temple to perform the sacrifices and rituals. After driving the enemy from Jerusalem, the Maccabees invited everyone to Jerusalem to celebrate the holiday they'd most recently missed: Sukkot, which in Temple Times was celebrated by the people together with Shmini Atzeres as an 8-day holiday.

Simple right? So, why doesn't the average OJ accept it? I, myself, have explained the connection between Sukkot and Hanukkah to dozens of people, and several of them have returned to me in subsequent years with new answers to the Bet Yosef's Question. Why? Retire the question. The answer has been given to you! What accounts for our inability, as a people, to let this sink in?

YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE

• Oy Chanuka
• In defense of the Hanukkah Miracle
• Ghosts of Hanukkah Past

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The day is called Christmas

Happy December and welcome once again to the holiday season!  Has your school or shul started sending out transportation, or class, or minyan information for December 25? Mine has! And just like always the demonic day is referred to in the official school or shul correspondence not as "Christmas", god forbid, but as "Legal Holiday."

Do I need to explain why this annoys me? The day is called Christmas. Everyone knows this. When you use a euphemism you muddle thing up. It takes me an extra second to process that the Legal Holiday is, in fact, what earthlings call Christmas. Imposing that (very slight) inconvenience on me is a trifling, but still discourteous.

Anyway, what do you think will happen if you call the day by its actual name? Will the cholent go bad? Will your members resign en masse? School administrators and synagogue sextons please take note of this! I promise the world will continue to spin on its axis if you use the word "Christmas" in your mailings. And, as an added bonus, you will be speaking in a straightforward manner with all ambiguity removed. Nice, right!

A note to forestall Garnel's obvious objection: No, this isn't the same as the annual Happy Holidays fake national emergency during which conservative commentators make believe that the Jews and their secular liberal friends are destroying Christmas via their unscrupulous use of the phrase Happy Holidays. I'll let Jon Stewart explain why:

Mr. O'Reilly also objects, obviously, to the use of the phrase "happy holidays" as anti-Christian -- although for some people, there is also a celebration of the New Year, so Christmas and the New Year are actually two holidays, so there is a plural, which in the English language necessitates the use of the letter S

Also, some people just don't want to be wished a Merry Christmas, in which case its courteous to use an alternative.

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Things I Wish Orthodox Jews Would Stop Believing

All these years behind the keyboard communicating with the unwashed Internet masses, and yet it still surprises me to meet well-educated Jews who are caught in the grips of dangerously dumb ideas.

What would it take to defeat them once and forever? The problem isn't one of candlepower. Jews are, let's face it, smart. But even smart Jews push back when you introduce them to a good idea that seems impious or that contradicts elementary school teachings. Does our community reluctance to accept the truth, no matter its source, stem from an unhealthy fear of appearing less frum than our neighbors? Or is it just the stiff-neckedness for which we are famous?

In any event, here we go again with another DovBear list. Call it Things I Wish Orthodox Jews Would Stop Believing. I have a few, but let's start with your ideas. Add them here, in the comments, or on the Facebook version of this post. Ready, set go.



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What is God's job?

Biblical writers such as Ezekiel and the Psalmist conceived of God as a shepherd.  Its not hard to work out why. In those days, shepherding was a common profession, and to the sheep a shepherd is something of a God. He guides and directs the flock, and is responsible for leading it to food and water, and protecting it from wild animals. Working as a shepherd gave men a template for imagining how God works with men. They were shepherds themselves so they came to think of God as one, too.

We aren't shepherds anymore, and the template has changed. Now most of us work at office jobs, and the God most of us worship would fit right in. In the current popular imagination, God is a micro-manager who gets his hands dirty. Instead of guarding and guiding us like a shepherd, this God causes and, more importantly, cares about every small thing that happens. Instead of protecting us, He spends a lot of time worrying about our job performance. How many mitzvos did you do today? Are you doing more or less than last week?  And like the worst boss you ever had, this God is capricious and petty, demanding flattery and praise in exchange for favors. Instead of God as a shepherd, we have God as a small businessman

There is more to this shift in thinking then the fact that our jobs have changed. I've noticed that the people most committed to the idea of God as micro-mamanger tend not to be lawyers or employees of large corporations. Aside from the rabbis and teachers, they are almost all salesmen or petty business owners. I surmise that the men who do this sort of work are more likely than average to think of God this way because the men who do this sort of work are more susceptible to magical thinking, which is just an unkind way of saying that they need God more.

Think about it this way:  A guy who work for ACME International gets a regular paycheck. It comes every two weeks, whether he earns it or not. If that's your set-up, you start taking the money for granted. You stop worrying about how the Big Guy in the sky might be persuaded to keep the checks coming. Even if you watch porn and eat treif the checks won't be interrupted 

A guy who sells or runs his own business, on the other hand, is always cognizant of how fragile his finances are. Unlike Mr. Corporate, the salesman or small businessman's only eats when he has customers, and who can say why the customers come calling on one day, and not on another? Those of you who have worked in sales know how this can go. One day you hit the bushes and nothing happens. The next day you take it easy, and the phone rings off the hook. On Monday, the client yawns at your presentation. On Wednesday the exact same presentation scores a big contract. What's going on? Why are you making money one day, and nothing the next day? It becomes easy to chalk up your successes and failures to luck. Or to God.

So what happens next? Because God can control his clients, Mr Small Businessman starts to look for ways to control God. He dabbles in superstition. He looks for segulot. He becomes a prisoner to ritual. And, significant to the change described up in paragraph three, our Jewish small businessman also becomes deeply invested in the idea that God controls every little thing, and its corollary, viz, that God can be controlled through the performance of mitzvoth. This has to be true. It absolutely must be true. Otherwise, what chance does our guy, the small salesman or businessman, have at making a buck in the world? If God is indifferent there's nothing a magical thinker can actually do to make his business grow.

Our sheep-tending ancestors didn't have such worries and didn't think such thoughts. As a result they didn't conceive of God the same way that we do. Their God, was a God who merely watched over a flock. He has been supplanted by a modern God, the God who "runs" things.

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