Kesher Talk: 02/01/2004

Saturday, February 07, 2004

Tu B'shvat is today. Aish offers some background and the basics for running your own Tu B'Shvat seder, in case you're not hanging with Judith for her birthday in New York...

Friday, February 06, 2004

Just FYI. Tomorrow is my birthday. If you've been reading KT for awhile you know which one.

It's also Tu B'shvat, the New Year of the Trees. And Shabbat Shira, with the longest haftarah in the chumash. I've chanted that haftarah twice, but I'm taking a break this year, since I'm practicing leading musaf with a repetition of the Amidah the very next week, I'm planning to lead shacharit again the week after that, and I'm also learning a long chapter of the Purim megillah.

UPDATE: More about Tu B'shvat here and here and here.

What's fun about TBS is that since its ritual is not only post-Torah, but most of it is post-Talmud, people can create ritual for it without running afoul of halacha or even minhag. Also whatever ritual has become commonplace is based on the Lurianic kabbalists of Sfat, so it's truly a kabbalistic holiday. Tu B'shvat: Crunchy-granola plus kabbala. What a frightening combination.

Is spam an ethical business practice? The Jewish Ethicist weighs in:

In principle, Jewish tradition does not frown on promotion. It is legitimate for a seller to try and make his product known to potential buyers, and to inform them of the benefits of his wares.

... However, we must take care that selling doesn't turn into harassment. ...

... It's hard to provide a clear definition of when targeted marketing turns into spam. But the two sources from Jewish law can help provide some context. In both cases, the criterion that makes the approach permissible is not a desire to make a deal per se but rather the existence of a basic interest. A customer who has some interest in making a purchase is not wasting the salesperson's time, and a person who has expressed even a possible interest in selling his property may be approached by someone with an interesting offer.

By the same token, a recipient considers an e-mail to be "spam" not because he doesn't want to buy the product but rather because he is not interested in even learning about the product. It's not only a waste of his time to read the message; it's even a waste of time to go to the trouble of deleting it.

Based on this criterion, a mass mailing would be problematic if it is for something that relatively few people are interested in learning about and no efforts are made to target specifically those individuals who would express interest.

It goes without saying that the message should not be misleading, tricking the recipient into reading the message by camouflaging it as a message which is of interest, such as a business or personal communication, winning a contest, etc. This violates the prohibition of "geneivat da'at" or misleading others.

It also goes without saying that the mailing should not violate the law. Very often middlemen of the kind you mention use illegal techniques to evade anti-spam efforts of Internet service providers. For example, they use a false return address. When you use the services of such an agent, Jewish law views you as an accomplice to the crime.

Thursday, February 05, 2004

Jews in odd places: South Africa: Even as observers warn of a growing trend of anti-Semitism in Greece, a South African Jew is trying to build stronger ties between the Jewish and Greek communities in South Africa. Ronnie Mink, chairman of Yad Vashem in South Africa, believes there is potential for a better relationship between the roughly 50,000 Jews in Johannesburg and their 40,000 Greek “brothers.”

As white minority groups in post-apartheid South Africa, the two communities share similar interests. Rampant crime and instability have spurred members of both communities to emigrate. The number of Jews in South Africa fell to about 80,000 today from about 125,000 in the 1970s. The number of Greeks has fallen to 70,000 from about 250,000 as community members have left for Greece, the United States and other places.

The relationship between Greeks and Jews historically has been reasonably good, with strong business connections, but the two communities have remained apart socially. Greek and Jewish anti-apartheid activists, such as legendary human rights lawyers George Bizos and Arthur Chaskalson, now president of South Africa’s Constitutional Court, worked together closely to defend dissidents such as Nelson Mandela.

Now Mink is joining with Greek Orthodox church leader George Vizos to try to strengthen ties between the two minority communities.

This comes at the same time as Jewish leaders are hatching a plan to make young Jews proud of their identity both as South Africans and as Jews, in large part by increasing Jewish involvement in the general South African community, particularly when it comes to securing equal rights.

Of course, Jews don't have the best record of niceties, as Gideon Shimoni points out in his recent book, Community and Conscience: The Jews in Apartheid South Africa. Most of South Africa's Jews originated from Lithuania and stepped from oppression there into a society in which their "white" skin color instantly and automatically made them oppressors. They became part of the white minority that ruled over the black majority.

Wednesday, February 04, 2004

Flavors of genocide. There's been a discussion among several bloggers about the "uniqueness" of the Shoah. Meryl has the link roundup and the most salient point:

Its uniqueness was due to the fact that a nation set out to exterminate all the people in a certain ethnic group, all over the world. Hitler started with the Jews of Europe, and did an astonishingly thorough job. His goal was to continue until the entire planet was judenrein. He didn't "just" kill a lot of Jews. He created an efficient, organized death machine whose purpose was to eliminate Jews from the planet. . . .

Another aspect of the uniqueness of the Holocaust is that many of the nations which Hitler conquered were willingly complicit, helping to round up Jews and ship them off to the camps. They, too, wanted to see a world without Jews. No such thing happened in any of the other atrocities you mention. Pol Pot wasn't aided by Korea and Thailand. Stalin didn't have help from China. Hitler had his adherents in eastern Europe, even in Poland. Read the stories of Holocaust survivors. Polish Jews were massacred by the Poles while under German rule. Half the world was complicit in this, Clayton. That's why it remains emphasized.

It's depressing that - after 50 years of museums and classes and documentaries - anyone has to continue to point that out. As Lynn notes, this is in the same class as the "Bush=Hitler" type of holocaust denial noted by Jonah Goldberg. These people don't deny that it happened and was horrible, but they still are unable or unwilling to get their minds around the whole program: the stark fact that less than 100 years ago someone baldly and repeatedly stated that his goal was to exterminate every single one of a people (and in fact compared them to vermin on many occasions), and not only did nobody protest much, many people - even those he conquered, who hated his oppressive rule - enthusiastically helped him.

Just sit and think about that for a few minutes. If you can.

UPDATE: The debate continues. Meryl quotes Sasha Volokh:

Take any six million people murdered. You can draw a circle around them and say, "These six million people define a particular group X," and the killing of these people is especially evil because it's the systematic extermination of everyone in group X. Of course, in the general case, there's nothing "special" about group X. It's just a somewhat random assortment of people: {Fred, Dave, Sasha, ...}. Why should the set Y = {Jews} be "special"? Only because there's something special about having Jews in the world. But "an entire people" has no moral value, except insofar as that "people" contains people. I don't care whether Jews as a group exist; but I do care about every individual Jew, as much as I care about every individual whatever-else. Corollary: Every group X containing six million people is equally valuable, and any murder of any group X is equally immoral.

Wow. Utterly destroying a unique and ancient culture is exactly equivalent to destroying an equal number of random individuals. I wonder if eating a fine perfectly cooked filet mignon is exactly equivalent to receiving the same amount of nutrients and vitamins via a swallowed pill, or if listening to a lilting Irish brogue is exactly equivalent to listening to a computer-generated synthetic voice, or if a unique ecosystem - with its sounds, smells, and textures - is exactly equivalent to a carefully manicured suburban lawn.

I am not trying to minimize the slaughter of 6 million random people, each of whom is a unique irreplaceable creation. On the contrary, I respect their irreplaceable uniqueness more than Volokh does. Irreplaceable unique humans create irreplaceable unique human cultures. Put a group of humans down in a particular locale and that's what they do: as a group, over a period of time, they create unique languages, metaphorical systems, inflections, combinations of tasty spices and foods, musical modes and instruments, historical sagas, colorful clothing and utensils, approaches to the mystery of existence, all of which can be distinguished from those of the group on the other side of the mountain or river. The only humans who don't do that are sociopathic or autistic. So to Volokh, those 6 million random individuals might as well be 6 million unique configurations of amino acids.

Sasha, would you be as sanguine about the extermination of the entire American way of life and approach to social organization. Are the individuals who comprise the current manifestation if the 300 year old American experiment equivalent to an equal number of random individuals? Can you see that if all Americans were exterminated, more would be lost than simply a large number of individuals? (I hope I don't need to add that of course this applies to any culture, each of which beings its own unique gifts to the global table.)

If you can't see that, I have to agree with Meryl that I have no idea what makes people like you tick. All I can say in response is this: the tastes, textures, sounds, metaphors and unique insights of my culture are more precious to me than my life. There there is still a vibrant Jewish culture today because thousands of us have felt that way, century after century. I'm sorry you don't get it.

By the way, even if you don't get it, you get to benefit from it.

An expansion of these ideas on the value of cultural uniqueness.

MORE: Sasha also writes about Hitler's blatant intentions to exterminate the Jews, in the context of legal meanings of "intent."

"Intent" is a very particular animal: in the words of Glanville Williams, "A consequence is intended when it is desired to follow as the result of the actor's conduct." I've got a gun, I knowingly point it at you and pull the trigger, knowing that you'll probably die as a result and desiring that you die -- that's murder. Did I do it for money? For sex? To eat you? Because I hate Jews? Those sorts of motivations are irrelevant to whether it was murder.

Sasha engages in a bit of sleight of hand here. Meryl's comments were not about motivation, but about passivity and/or subtle encouragement in the face of repeated threats. And those are addressed by the law.

Sasha, if my next door neighbor or ex-husband repeatedly threatens to kill me, I can go to the police and get a restraining order. The law recognizes that threats have to be taken seriously. If this person repeatedly slanders me to my community, that's libel. If this person's libel causes me to suffer loss of livelihood and physical danger from neighbors who buy into his lies, that is incitement. If my local courts do nothing, and I take my case to higher and higher courts outside my immediate neighborhood, and tell newspaper reporters, and everyone knows this person is repeatedly threatening to kill me but does nothing . . . well, some states have "failure to rescue" laws. If you know someone is in danger and you have the ability to help, and you do not, you are liable. If an entire community stands by and lets an innocent person be murdered because they didn't want to intervene or were secretly glad to be rid of that person, then we have the Kitty Genovese case, and lynchings.

Hitler applied slander, incitement, and threats - publically, over more than a decade - to a particular group, which to him was not just a random collection of individuals, but a cohesive entity which deserved elimination. And Western civilization stood around and yawned.

Yes, most of us stood around and yawned while the Hutus were attempting to exterminate the Tutsis. But the Hutus did not attempt to implement a carefully designed system of progressive removal of civil rights, sophisticated media propaganda, and extermination camps, over a period of years, all the while announcing their intentions to the world at large. And I can't think of any person or group who joked to each other at cocktail parties how the Tutsis had it coming, and how the Hutus were doing the world a favor. Nor was this the case with any of the other attempted genocides mentioned in this debate.

That's the difference, which your legal analogy simply ignores.

UPDATE: More from Meryl, with links to more bloggers who offered their opinions. I have to take issue with Brant Hadaway for his classification of Jews as a race. Judaism has two modes of transmission: by birth and by conversion. Children of a Jewish mother are halachically automatically Jewish, regardless of the ethnic identity of the father, unless the children convert to another religion at some point. But anyone can convert to Judaism, which people of all races have done and continue to do. it doesn't make sense to talk of Jews as a race when some of us are black Ugandans and some are blond Russians.

More here.

UPDATE: So let's not stand around and yawn this time.

Jewish marriage: 10 things never to do, according to Dr. Michael Tobin:

Don't take your partner for granted

Don't mind-read

Don't blame

Don't interpret

Don't say yes when you mean no

Don't use silence as a weapon

Don't act out

Don't discount

Don't threaten

Don't triangulate

Read more in parts 1 and 2 of his explanations and exercises.

Tuesday, February 03, 2004

Giving new meaning to the phrase "designated driver." In Israel, in the wake of recent terrorist attacks, suspicion can now land you in jail. I think there are fascinating legal implications to the fact that the Israeli government is considering a taxi driver in some way responsible for the fact that one of his fares turned out to be a terrorist.

A quote: "The issues include: Does the government have the right to mobilize civilian sectors in combating terrorism? What is the trade-off between civil liberties and expanded police powers? Can someone be convicted as an accomplice simply because he suspected or should have suspected that someone else would carry out a crime?" From The Christian Science Monitor.

Killing your parents and asking the court to have mercy because you're an orphan Dept. Palestinians complain that Israel isn't providing more medical services. Excuse me while I get out the world's tiniest violin . . .

Jews in odd places: The Netherlands:

The members of the Portuguese (i.e., Sephardi) nation in Amsterdam claimed that they lived - or at least aspired to live - according to the principal they called "bom judesmo" ("good and beautiful Judaism"). The Jew and his community were supposed to live according to a code of behavior that would demonstrate and prove the superiority and beauty of Judaism. Everything that needed to be done should be done in a "cultured" way: Prayers, for example, should be said without shouting, and preferably accompanied by suitable music, well-executed. The observance of these values, which we would call bourgeois, expressed the mode of thinking of the members of the community and the way in which their Jewish lives were organized and run, and the difference between them and the Ashkenazim (Jews of non-Iberian European origin). The Sephardi Jews of Amsterdam saw themselves as the elite among the Jewish communities and understood their Judaism in the light of the concept of honor, which was a major axis of their lives.

The articles in From New Christians to New Jews by Jerusalemite scholar Yosef Kaplan discuss the Sephardi diaspora in the early modern period and deal with the ways the Sephardi community and its activities were formed, the changes that occurred in European society and their influence on the Sephardim in Amsterdam.

Monday, February 02, 2004

New Atom Feed: Kesher Talk can now be syndicated using Atom.

Jews in odd places: London, England: Britain?s only Jewish radio station has gone live for its third stint on the air. While its current license only lasts for four weeks, those behind the station hope that ShalomFM will be a permanent fixture on the community-based broadcasting dial by the end of the year.

?We are one of the few ethnic groups in London without a radio voice, and it would be nice to hear some balanced reporting about the community and Israel,? says the station?s co-founder, Mike Mendoza.

Sunday, February 01, 2004

Bloggers of the Book, cont. Naomi Chana's project, a virtual Jewish book discussion group by blog, is finally getting underway. More details here. (Also she's got a bunch of new posts up and writes one of the best Jewish blogs out there.)

Davening in El Salvador. I daven with somebody who participated in this rabbinical student trip to El Salvador. So I know what they sounded like, and why - in the midst of an article about an old-fashioned "solidarity with the Third World" social action project - Leonard Fein was moved to comment on the quality of the davening.

Prayer is in fact the constant rhythm of the group. It is distinguished by the competence the participants bring to it, by its assertiveness . . . and by new melodies and spontaneous harmonies that now and then transform the collection of individuals into a choir. The music they so expertly sing is post-Carlebach; they know the melodies that were new to me 10 and 15 years ago, but those are old and tired to their ears. Their unfamiliar music is altogether lovely ? and their praying to that music is very nearly interminable. We are awakened at 6:00 a.m., and morning prayers begin at 6:20 and do not end until an hour later. Then there are the afternoon prayers and then evening prayers, each again a musical experience, each also an opportunity for these rabbis-to-be to offer comment on the meaning of the prayer and its connection to the immediate purpose that has brought them to this dusty corner of this distant land.

. . . But Ciudad Romero provides only the setting and the subtext for our visit. Vastly more central, even urgent, is the cross-denominational interaction and, again and again, tefillot, prayer. In off times, too ? the breaks between lectures, the spare moments here and there ? there's singing, and the singing is almost invariably liturgical. For me, this is the sharpest evidence of generational change. In my younger days, when social justice advocates gathered, it was union songs we'd sing, and the songs of the Weavers, and always, of course, the songs of the Second Aliya and of Israel's early years.

Fein describes very well what this up and coming generation of liturgically competent Jews is bringing to the Jewish community: spirited a capella group davening that doesn't mumble tunelessly, carried by traditional nusach with surges of achingly beautiful melody that's more often in the nusach modes than Western keys. One of my personal goals is to help it spread.

Israeli-Indian cooperation continues: The Israeli Medical Cadets (Pirhei Refuah) program is to send 14 volunteers to India, to teach emergency medical care to villages in need. The 10-day program is the third of its kind.

Kesher Talk

Saturday, February 07, 2004

Friday, February 06, 2004

Thursday, February 05, 2004

Wednesday, February 04, 2004

Tuesday, February 03, 2004

Monday, February 02, 2004

Sunday, February 01, 2004

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