Why aren’t poppies more popular?
1. Sensitivity is the key Jewish value. This week’s Torah reading finds Abraham – who discovered Judaism – exploring with God how to maximise the opportunities for even the most wicked and greedy of all cultures, the connurbation of Sodom and Gemorrah, to escape total destruction. And it finds him building a religious philosophy based on the concept of welcoming guests and visitors from all corners of the cultural globe, and ministering to the needs of each with a unique sensitivity.
2. So presumably the orthodox Jewish community will be alert for ways of feeling and showing sensitivity to others. Sensitivity to the feelings of those who fought, or whose families fought, to preserve a malchus shel chesed – a free and democratic society – where every religion and culture could receive respect and could cherish its own culture and values alongside those of its host society? Sensitivity to the grief of those who every year mourn those who lost their lives in the battle for this country’s freedom. And sensitivity to the desire of a free nation to mark its feelings of the senselessness and wickedness of the lust and ambition that soaked the fields of Europe twice in the blood of those whose lives should have been dedicated to something better; the blood-soaked fields of the World War One trenches, whose blood-red poppies were gathered as the guns fell silent in spontaneous tribute to those who fell.
3. The ranks of the orthodox community should be ablaze with poppies between now and Remembrance Day. It is a rare opportunity to share a cultural and non-religious symbol with all those who live around us, men and women of all religions or of no religion. There are still a few days left to buy our poppies and show Abraham’s sensitivity to those around us – let’s get buying.
Rabbis Gone Wrong – Tisha B’Av 2009
1. Let’s prepare for the worst – that not every one of the rabbis arrested by the FBI yesterday turns out to be a maligned innocent, but that rabbis turn out to have knowingly been involved in money laundering.
2. If that is the case, then here is this year’s Kamtza and Bar Kamtza challenge for the rabbinical world and the whole Jewish community, just in time for this year’s Tisha B’av.
3. If I call myself a Jew and I behave badly, God’s name is besmirched. If I call myself a rabbi and behave badly, the Torah is discredited: thousands of neshomohs may be turned away from Jewish values and practice because the Judaism that a “rabbi” represents appears spiritually bankrupt.
4. One of the many faults of this generation’s Jewish community is that we have allowed people too easily to assume the title Rabbi. On the one hand, semichah has become a kind of routine examination whereby people can obtain official ordination after just a few years’ study and without any serious kind of estimation of their moral character or leadership qualities. On the other hand, even without semichah of any formal kind people are allowed to assume the title, or are accorded it as an honorific, without any serious justification or need. (The Chazon Ish did not have semichah, because he never needed it.)
5. To reverse this process would be enormously difficult. But not impossible, if the will from the rabbis and the people were there. The essence of the Kamtza and Bar Kamtzah story is that the rabbis sat and did nothing. The rabbis, with our encouragement and support, need to restore the lustre to their holy office. They need publicly to expel those who degrade it, by public proclamations of who is no longer fitting to act in reliance on a semichah; and they need to take serious steps to ensure that woldwide the title is reserved for those who have shown more than a few years attendance at a talmudic sausage factory to deserve it.
Sense and Sensibility – The Bournemouth Lights Fiasco
1. The BBC news is reporting today that a couple are suing the management company of their Bournemouth flat for installing automatic light sensors that will prevent them from using their flat on shabbos. They are claiming religious discrimination.
2. Just a few thoughts.
3. First and foremost, this raises general issues about the use of laws on religious and other discrimination. Laws are no substitute for sense and sensitivity – not to mention manners – all round. The fact that laws have to be cast in wide terms does not mean it is always appropriate to rely upon them: to insist upon ones rights can sometimes help to turn us into a selfish and litigious society, rather than a caring and sensitive one.
4. Secondly, who have these people asked about the position on shabbos? I do not know the precise circumstances of their flat and the positioning and use of these lights. But based on the facts in the news report, if it is forbidden by halochoh to walk past these sensors and turn the lights on, then I am a baked hedgehog with mushroom sauce. Yes, the lights will certainly come on each time – but that doesn’t make it forbidden to walk past them: for those interested in the technicalities, it is a din of misaseik rather than a din of psik reisho. Of course, every case is different and what is permitted in one context may be forbidden in another – but on an issue like this one would need to consult one of the gedolei hador (which for all I know they may have done). A little halachic knowledge is always worse than none – and can lead one to go seriously wrong in either direction.
5. Thirdly, what sort of impression will this give their neighbours of the way Jews behave? Answer: if they lose, bad – and if they win, worse. Why should I insist that my religious principles should cause other people to spend extra money on equipment and electricity, contrary to their economic interests and ecological principles? Not burdening ones neighbours is a significant halachic principle. Standing on our rights rarely makes people think well of us.
6. I may be misjudging these people and their situation seriously – because my comments are based only on the BBC news report: but from what I can make of that, it is possible the whole episode is a serious misjudgment, neither required nor desirable in accordance with halochoh. Of course, there are other factors one would need to take into account before forming a judgment about this behaviour: in particular, what contractual or other commitments were given on the acquisition of the lease and by whom; and what attempts have been made to resolve this issue without recourse to the courts. Overall the news report makes uncomfortable reading, and reminds us of the importance of doing whatever we can to treat, and be seen to treat, our host countries in exile with respect and gratitude, and not to appear to be overly demanding or insensitive to other people’s rights and values.
Converting to Judaism: How to Become Jewish (and Why Not To).
1. I have been threatening for some time to publish my thoughts on how the conversion process works, does not work, and ought to work.
2. I have now done so: How to Become Jewish (And Why Not To) is now in print. It describes itself as an impractical guide to the conversion process, and is certainly not intended to be an authoritative or comprehensive manual. It is written carefully from a point of view likely to annoy all sides of the religious spectrum equally, although it purports to be an orthodox publication and will therefore (probably) annoy the left a little more than the right.
3. The book is available on Amazon and can be ordered through booksellers – ISBN 978 – 1 – 906645 – 96 – 0. But the cheapest way of acquiring it is direct from me at cost (about £6.50, depending on method of payment and delivery requirements): email me at dgreenberg@hotmail.co.uk.
4. The book consists of a series of questions:
Question 1 – Why would anyone want to become Jewish?
Question 2 – How do “regularisation” cases arise?
Question 3 – How do “marriage” cases arise?
Question 4 – Why does anyone want to become a “real” convert?
Question 5 – What exactly is conversion?
Question 6 – How does the process work today in the United Kingdom?
Question 7 – How does the process work in America?
Question 8 – How does the process work in Israel?
Question 9 – What are the basic skills a candidate needs to master?
Question 10 – How much does conversion cost?
Question 11 – How long does the process take?
Question 12 – Will I need to be circumcised?
Question 13 – Which is the best country to convert in?
Question 14 – Which Beth Din should I choose?
Question 15 – Why should I have an orthodox conversion?
Question 16 – Is it really necessary to be so hard on prospective converts?
Question 17 – Why does Judaism not proselytise?
Question 18 – What status do converts have in the Jewish community?
Question 19 – So what does the convert get out of the process?
Question 20 – What kind of Jew should I become?
Question 21 – Need conversion cut me off from my family and friends?
Question 22 – Do I have to be a Zionist to become Jewish?
Question 23 – What most needs to be changed?
5. I have not been able to discover that it is against the rules to use this Blog site for an advertisement – but if anybody knows that it is, please let me know and I will remove this at once. Many thanks.
Money for Nothing?
1. A lovely lady has just died and left her former neighbours around the village of Solva a large amount of money, in a wide variety of bequests.
2. I just heard a radio journalist ask the local publican how he felt about it. He answered “well when someone gives you money for nothing you’re bound to feel good about it”.
3. Thereby missing the point of the bequest. This was not “money for nothing” – it was a celebration of gratitude for real – but intangible – benefits received from the warmth and companionship of the whole village.
4. This lady has taught us a wonderful lesson in the Jewish principle of hakoras hatov – gratitude – one of the key attributes ascribed to the Divine image in which we are all created.
5. What good timing as well: this lesson comes on the eve of Shavuot, on which festival we read about Ruth, another lady who taught the Jewish community a powerful lesson in the practice of our own Jewish values. Ruth, indeed, did it so effectively that the influx of much-needed spiritual energy that she brought to the community was the foundation for the birth and nurture of King David, from whose descendants the Messiah will eventually come. We are much in need of bursts of constructive spiritual energy today – a few more lessons in gratitude like this one, and we may be ready for King David mach 2.
Slumdog Millionaire – “It’s all a muddle”
1. I saw the film Slumdog Millionaire this week. I came away with two enduring impressions.
2. First, unease at how much explicit violence and brutality is thought necessary to maintain the interest of a cinema audience today. Going to the cinema only rarely, it is easier to track the changes. Psychologists argue whether on-screen violence has any effect on real behaviour. The rest of us simply know as a matter of common-sense that of course it does. Desensitise people by exposure to graphic violence on screen, and you numb the sensitivities that preserve the Divine image in which each of us was created.
3. Secondly, the film portrays misery and exploitation on every side. The happy ending is a sugar coating added to the pill as an after-thought, and it is the only implausible part of the film. The rest, the inescapable wretchedness of millions of people’s lives, is entirely plausible.
4. None of this is new, of course. Dickens was portraying the lives of youngsters trapped into crime, prostitution, poverty and beggary many decades ago – and even he was merely continuing an ancient tradition of reporting though fiction what has been a timeless theme of reality. One of Dickens’ characters sums the whole thing up for us remarkably well, in a manner that has rarely been surpassed for accuracy and simplicity – Stephen Blackpool’s oft-repeated exclamation of ultimate hopelessness “It’s all a muddle”. A world in which the only people who seem to have the power to control their own and others’ destinies inevitably misuse and abuse that power, while for everyone else the world is a board-game on which they are the pieces, moved about at the apparently pointless whim of human and God alike.
5. In this week’s Torah reading B’shalach, the Torah explains that God could have taken the Jews out of Egypt by a short route, but He chose the longer one because He was concerned that if the Jews saw battle with the Plishtim they would return to Egypt. Baffling on many counts. (1) If God wants the Plishtim not to attack, He could arrange for that. (2) And if the Plishtim do attack and God wants the Jews to win, He could see to that just as he sees to victory over the Egyptians for them. (3) If God wants to stop the Jews returning to Egypt He again has a number of options – but given the manner of their leaving and their probable reception, return was probably not high on their list of survival strategies.
6. There is the usual range of ways of understanding all this. But to some extent, God has already explained what is going in when He told Moses in last week’s parashah that the exodus was being stage-managed for the purpose of creating the greatest possible impression of God’s powers on the world as a whole, for all time. The Jews are pawns in the game, and the game requires them to be set against the Egyptians and not against the Plishtim. The danger of returning to Egypt is not a danger of actual return, but a danger of returning to the spiritual mentality of the Egyptian culture: the aim of setting the Jews against the Egyptians is to enable the former to rise to the challenge of representing the cultural antithesis of the latter, a people of trust in God and of kindness to each other set against a people of trust only in human strength as epitomised by the successful exploitation of others’ weakness.
7. We are all pawns in God’s game, and sooner or later we all come to realise it. Even the exploiters reach a stage in their lives when they realise that their battle to control events is finally over, and that only God knows what comes next.
8. But there are two ways to be a pawn. One can recognise it from the beginning and submit, realising that it is only the choices that are left to me that matter, and that instead of struggling to expand the boundaries of my own power to control events around me I should concentrate on making the right decisions in relation to matters that appear to be “delegated” to me. Or one can resent the external control and struggle constantly against it, the futility of the exercise being masked by apparent successes from time to time when what God and I want happen to coincide.
9. Much of this week’s parashah is about the Jews’ struggle to understand the right way to be a pawn. And it is difficult: because sometimes the Torah tells me to submit – “God will fight for you, and you should just stay quiet” (Shemos 14:14); and at other times the Torah appears to encourage us to set ourselves targets of a physical kind and not just to rely on God to do the work for us. Getting the balance right is an eternal Jewish preoccupation. But although we will never be satisfied that we have got the balance quite right, at least we understand the aim of the exercise.
10. I will never understand why some people are born in an Indian slum to a life of poverty, easy prey for all kinds of miserable exploitation; any more than I will ever understand why I was not. We are all pawns in God’s game, and nobody asks me to understand it, or even to like it. All I can do is to submit to what I cannot change, and to concentrate on making good choices where I appear to be given the ability to change anything. Sometimes my path in the game will come so close to someone else’s that I have the ability to make theirs easier for them: when that happens I get pleasure from my apparent ability to help them, although in reality the help comes from God who put Pawn A into the path of Pawn B at the right time. So long as I don’t take my own part in it too seriously, no harm is done.
Did Sarah suffer from senile dementia?
1. The Rabbis tell us that the Matriarch Sarah – Soroh Imeinu – died the “kiss-like” death reserved for the completely righteous, where they slip almost imperceptibly from one world into the next.
2. But what was she like before her death? Did she go to sleep one night in possession of all her faculties and pass tranquilly to the next world in her sleep? Or did the transition take place over a longer period, and was it accompanied by a gradual loss of the intellectual faculties that tie us to this world as much as the more tangible part of the corporeal side of our personality? Did she gradually slip more and more “into her own world”, with less and less ability to connect with and understand this one, until she finally slipped altogether into the next?
3. Doctors tell us that dementia is becoming more common. This may be a function of the increased stress under which we live. Or it may reflect the improved ability of medical science to keep our bodies going longer. Probably it is a combination of many factors. But whatever its cause, it is a condition with which more and more people come to terms.
4. In an old age home somewhere in London lives a man, whose age would once have been thought advanced but is now nothing remarkable. Ten years ago, he was reknowned for his piety and his intellect. His learning was considered by those entitled to an opinion to rank him as one of the foremost Talmudic and rabbinic scholars in the world.
5. Now he sits in his old age home, often unsure what is going on around him, unable to remember many things that one needs to remember in order to function effectively in this world and to look after oneself. And I sometimes hear people mention him and add something like “isn’t it a shame, when one thinks what he was?”
6. Depending on precisely what they mean, they are either right or terribly wrong. When a wise and active scholar ceases to be able to use his or her brain in the way they once could, it is indeed a shame – but for us, not for them. We lose the benefit of their wisdom and intellect, which was once such an important Divine blessing for us. We would have lost it, of course, had they simply died: but it is more frustrating for us this way, seeing their faculties wane gradually, and seeing them alive and well physically but no longer able to give us the help and guidance that we so desperately need and at which they once excelled. And if it is frustrating for us, how terrible must it be for those close to them emotionally – their relatives and close friends.
7. Of course, though, we must try to control our grief in the same way we do when a person simply dies. The Rabbis explain the small letter used in the word describing Abraham’s grief when Sarah died by the fact that not too many tears were needed to be shed for her, since her life had been sucn an unalloyed blessing to her and those around her, so that joy and not grief was the more durable emotion to be associated with her forever. That is true of a person whose contribution has been great, whether it is brought to an end suddenly by death or gradually by disease.
8. And if by “what a shame!” is meant “what a shame for them”, it misses the point completely. The man I speak of was once a great soul and a great mind. His mind is no longer great, but his soul shines out all the more brightly for that. We are not normally privileged to see the purity of a soul while it is still bound to this world: on rare occasions we are privileged to see what decades’ dedicated practice of the Torah can make of a person’s moral and spiritual instincts – so that long after they are able to control much of their behaviour by the intellect the ingrained characteristics of love, gratitude and concern (all Divine attributes) shine out of them and make them a source of wonder and inspiration to all who see them.
9. We too easily mistake the mind for the soul. A person may be a brilliant intellect, a charismatic, dynamic speaker, a charming personality, and spiritually inert. Brilliant Talmudic dialectic is a thing of this world, not the next: it can be used to guard and develop a person’s soul so that when the intellect fails the soul shines out in all its original purity – but in itself it is spiritually neutral.
10. Of course, dementia brings moments of mental pain, anguish and confusion; just like other physical diseases. And when we see them we feel a sympathetic distress. But, again, that may sometimes be our problem, not the person’s. If a friend who once knew me well no longer recognises me, that upsets me – but I must not make the mistake of thinking that it necessarily upsets him or her; or that it is their problem rather than mine.
11. Thinking of the increasing incidence of dementia makes me want to pray. Not “Dear God, please don’t let me suffer from dementia before I die”. But rather something a little more confused along the following lines: “Dear God, please help me to use the mental faculties I have while I can still control them, so that when I stop being able to control them, whether that happens before I die or when I die, they have done their bit to make the real me – the soul and not the brain – something that you and I can rejoice in; and, please, if I am to go through a period of inability to control my mind before I die, help me to use it in the meantime to put the “real me”, whatever that is, into sufficient shape to ensure that those wh0 are close to me do not have to suffer the pain of being ashamed of me”.
Charity in the Credit Crunch
1. This Thursday the Agudah rabbonim have called a day of prayer on account of the continuing and deepening impact of the recession. With so many local families and institutions in financial difficulty, the rabbis urge us to pray for Divine compassion.
2. At the same time, they remind us that those of us who are still blessed with jobs and sufficient incomes should be giving what we can to communal institutions and other tzedokohs.
3. The concept of the tithing of income derives from this week’s parashah; at the end of a conversation between Yaakov and Hashem (Bereishis 28:20-22). Yaakov says to Hashem, in essence, “if you are with me on my journey, give me food and clothing and bring me home safely, then I will give back one tenth of whatever you give me”.
4. A strange way to talk to God. Striking a bargain with God in this peremptory fashion is strange enough to begin with. And to promise to pay the donor for a benefit conferred by agreeing to return one tenth of the benefit is strange enough to be going on with; how should that convince the donor to give?
5. The practice of tithing is a recognition that everything belongs to and comes from God. If we recognise the Divine origin of everything we have, we can turn to God with confidence and trust, and ask Him to continue His blessings; by promising to use them for good (a concept which includes, but is not limited to, setting a part aside for others) we are trying to make ourselves fitting recipients.
6. In hard times when we are confronted by financial difficulties on all sides it is that much easier not to take our material blessings for granted; if realising our blessings encourages us to give increasingly generously to various causes, encouraged by the increased importance and potential impact of a small amount of money in troubled times, we can see why the rabbis have always stressed that the perfect Messianic world is more likely to emerge out of troubled times – nothing is more likely to lead to it than an enhanced sense of our responsibilities to each other and the importance of sharing our blessings.
Happy Big Bang Day
1. It is very exciting that scientists have managed today to begin a challenging and long-awaited experiment into the nature of matter. Here are a few random thoughts generated in my mind by this morning’s launch of the protons.
2. First, it is worth saying again that there is no conflict between religious belief and scientific experiment. Indeed, the reverse is the case. The psalmist urges us to consider the magnitude and wonder of God’s work of creation, something that we can do more and more effectively the more science reveals to us about it. The Chofetz Chayim explains that the more we appreciate the nature of the creation, the more we can perceive the magnitude of its intended purpose. The founder of our religion, Abraham, came to his revolutionary belief in a single God by examining the nature of the universe, albeit that he had only his own senses to use to conduct the examination.
3. Secondly, there appears to be a possibility that when this morning’s experiment is continued to the collision phase the resultant explosion will destroy the world. Mildly troubling, but much less so to a religious person than to a secular scientist. The rabbis advise us to live each day and each moment as if it were our last – because it always may be. Easier said than done, of course: but at any rate the addition of one more possible reason why my life may end at any moment adds little or nothing to the importance of aiming to be ready at all times to give an account of my life.
4. Thirdly, the experiment demonstrates both the futility and the value of science. Scientists hoping to be given the meaning of life by colliding a couple of protons are likely to be disappointed: nothing that science has yet achieved (evolutionary theories included) has been successful in discovering, nor is there reason to expect that it will be successful about discovering, anything about the “why” of the world as distinct from the “how”. A search for the “why” by flailing about in the universe perpetrating random acts of molecular violence is likely to be futile. But application of increased knowledge of the ”how” (evolutionary theories included) to advance our understanding of how we can develop and improve the world, in a partnership with God, to the welfare and benefit of everyone in it, is always of the utmost value from a religious perspective.
