The Sceptic Blog

1. In this morning’s Torah reading - Korach - Moshe Rabbeinu protests, on learning of rebellion against his authority, that he has never so much as used a single donkey belonging to the people.

2. Rashi explains this apparently strange choice of example as referring to a particular journey undertaken by Moshe and his family for the benefit of the community: it would have been entirely reasonable for Moshe to have paid for the journey from communal funds, but he paid for it entirely himself.

3. According to Moshe, therefore, it seems that to have a reasonable expectation of unimpeachable integrity in public leadership it is necessary to show that one has not applied communal funds for personal benefit of any kind, or made any personal gain from ones position.

4. It is no longer feasible or appropriate, as it was not so long ago, for our politicians to be drawn only from the ranks of those who can afford to serve without any financial compensation for the time devoted to public service. But the present Parliamentary and public discussions about MP’s expenses show that the essential considerations have not changed since Biblical times: the more that MP’s can show that they have minimised their application of public funds to private purposes, the greater will be their integrity and the greater will be the consequent respect and loyalty that their public service commands.

1.  One might hope for high standards of journalism from the Jewish Chronicle, or at least basic observance of the Jewish laws of permitted and non-permitted speech.

2. In this week’s issue the Jewish Chronicle reports that a man has been charged with a very serious sexual offence.  The man is named and enough details given of the case to be likely to cause him to be stigmatised by many who read the article.  He is accused by a boy, whose name is not given for legal reasons.

3. For all the Jewish Chronicle can possibly know, this charge may be a complete fabrication.  Stranger things have happened.  The man may be acquitted when tried, or the charge may even be dropped before that.  Yet the stain of the accusation in the eyes of the prejudiced will follow him to the grave: thanks to the Jewish Chronicle.

4.  In Jewish law, there is no excuse for the publication of what is presently an unsubstantiated accusation - to do so is mere loshon horoh - culpable gossip.

5.  Of course, there are occasions when the public or a section of it requires to be warned about a danger even in the absence of a conviction: but this would not be the way to secure that end, which requires to be achieved with care, sensitivity and judgment.

1. In today’s episode of The Apprentice, Alan Sugar chooses to hire the only contestant caught deliberately lying in his application form. Message to the nation: try lying - it’s worth it: even if you get caught, nobody will care very much. Perhaps that’s why the BBC showed The Apprentice after the Watershed - teaching children to lie is worse than teaching them to use bad language.

2. What chance is the United Kingdom today giving its youth, when the media celebrate and exalt those whose ideals, if they ever learned any, are constantly subjugated to their desire for transient success?

3. Even a child who aspires to succeed at a healthy, wholesome sport like running, sees one of the media’s greatest sporting heroes - Paula Radcliffe - so desperate to win a marathon that she thinks it worth debasing herself to urinate in the gutter, while being filmed, rather than lose with dignity.

4. Alan Sugar makes no secret of being a Jew. What a shame that he cannot also demonstrate even a little of what it is to be Jewish. I am not talking about observance of the ritual laws, but about observance of the fundamental characteristics of the founders of our religion.

5. Abraham based our religion on kindness. The Apprentice is about getting on by putting other people down. The contestants are encouraged to fight in the boardroom as brutally as they can, having set each other up to fail so far as possible. When two of the contestants tried to bribe a shop-owner to ruin the other team’s chances I thought they would have to go - how could Sugar be seen to countenance even the possibility of having such people in his business? One of them stayed.

6. Isaac developed the characteristic of strength. Strength in rabbinic understanding is the ability to control oneself. Single-minded determination to win at all costs is the opposite of strength: it is the weakness to allow ambition to prevail over principle. The contestants in The Apprentice seem to care only about winning: as one of them actually said, there is nothing he would not do to win: the extremity of weakness being portrayed as praiseworthy strength.

7. Jacob developed the characteristic of truth. Truth appears to count for little in Sugar’s world. The winning contestant is the one who lied to get in; while one of the interviewers, proclaimed as a successful man of business, made light of this on the grounds that he had done it himself.

8. Many of us believe passionately that Judaism is not about social exclusivity, but about contributing to and being part of the real world. But that is difficult or impossible to do if the real world does not allow even basic standards of decent humanity to operate as the common denominator of acceptable behaviour.

1.  On Shavuos we tell the children that Mount Sinai was chosen as the place for giving the Torah to the Jewish people because, being the lowest of the surrounding mountains, it represents humility, an attribute required for receipt of the Torah.

2.  But there is another aspect to this symbolism.  If we all set out to climb Mount Everest, we will all reach different points before giving up: only a very few will reach the summit, from which they will look down on the rest of us with the self-satisfaction born of having achieved what the rest of us could not.  But if we all set out to climb a small hill, we can all make it to the top: of course, some of us will have to give others a helping hand, but one way or another we can all make it and reach the summit together.

3.  Torah is intended to be a lifestyle that is realistically attainable by everyone.  If it becomes a set of standards that are so demanding - whether financially or in terms of time or other commitments - that in practice only a very few can meet them, we know that we have gone wrong.  Judaism is not about setting high and exclusive targets so that I can look down on all those who fail to meet them: it is about travelling together, on a spiritual journey from which nobody need feel excluded.

4.  When I hear about terrible and inhuman things happening around the world, such as the recent genocidal violence in Rwanda or the present intimidatory violence in Zimbabwe, I worry about the numbers of people involved in making it happen.  There will always be resho’im - wicked people - and for obvious reasons many of them will choose to wield political power.  But if ordinary people were imbued with ordinary standards of human decency, the few resho’im would lack tools to carry out their wicked plans.  It is the moral and ethical vacuum inside thousands of ordinary people that enables them to be corrupted into tools of other people’s wickedness.

5.  It should be literally impossible for one person to beat another with sticks until he is bleeding on the ground.  It should be literally impossible for a group of soldiers to be incited to rape a group of women in a village.  Our education and cultures around the worldwide should make it simply beyond the range of activity that an ordinary human being will permit himself or herself to undertake.

6.  To have enclaves of people leading conspicuously holy lives is not a reflection of the Torah as given on Mount Sinai, a mountain representing universal attainment of basic spiritual goals.  If religion is failing to set basic standards of universal morality that protect each of us from our worst sides and from corruption by the relatively few actively wicked minds, then religion is failing to achieve the task for which the world and it were created.

1.  Two years ago I was giving a citizenship talk to the Hasmonean Girls’ School sixth form and we somehow got onto the subject of Yom Ha’atzmaut and how one celebrates it.  A girl at the front announced smugly “I don’t celebrate it at at all, because it’s in the Omer”.  I congratulated her on her perspicuity and added that since the Omer restrictions are to commemmorate the deaths of Rabbi Akiva’s pupils, and since the rabbis attribute the plague that killed them to disunity and in particular the inability to show each other respect while differing on matters of law and philosophy, by ignoring Yom Ha’atzmaut she was indeed keeping the Omer appropriately by introducing a little more division and disunity into the world.

2.  The vast majority of the observant Jewish world today celebrates Yom Ha’atzmaut as a modern miracle and a significant spiritual opprtunity.

3.  Of course, different communities do it in their different ways, and according to their different halachic understandings.  In the matter of Hallel, in particular, opinions vary as to whether and how it is to be said.

4.  To omit Hallel on halachic grounds is for the present just about tenable (although I suspect that in another few years it will have become such a tiny minority opinion as to be practically untenable).  But to say tachanun is another thing altogether.

5.  I brought an Israeli friend with me to shul on Yom Ha’atzmaut a few years ago.  When we got to tachanun and the rabbi and a few others started to say it he looked at me with shock and disbelief.  He could not believe that anywhere outside the deliberately isolationist communities of the chareidim tachanun would be said on Yom Ha’Atzmaut, and our community, while nominally part of the Adas, does not have the appearance of a chareidi shul.

6.  The general tzibbur of Jews in Eretz Yisroel celebrates Yom Ha’atzmaut as a yom tov akin to Purim and Chanukah.  The din of al tifrosh min hatzibbur (do not separate yourself from the community) comes into play at a global level as well as at an individual level.  It takes little to defer tachanun: a private simchah such as a bris is enough to prevent an entire community from saying tachanun: the simchah of 6 million Jews in Israel should be enough to prevent tachanun from being said by the rest of the worldwide community (apart from the fact that even for those of us who do not presently live in Israel the State and its foundation are of enormous spiritual significance).

1.  From what I see in the shops before Pesach these days, I fear that many people are unwittingly eating food on Pesach that is not kosher l’Pesach according to their own family and community traditions.

2.  Kitniot - rice, beans and pulses - are not chametz.  But the centuries-old ashkenazi minhag is not to eat them on Pesach, for any one of a number of possible reasons.  The sepharadi minhag has always been to allow kitniot on Pesach, and for them they are fully kosher l’Pesach.

3.  An increasing number of foods manufactured for Pesach in Israel contain kitniot, to accommodate the sepharadi majority.  Even surprising things - ice-cream, mayonnaise, ketchup - routinely contain kitniot nowadays.  But the fact is mentioned on the label only in very small Hebrew letters that can be difficult to find and decipher even for those who know what they are looking for.

4.  The shops in London clearly have a duty to put up large notices warning the majority ashkenazi population in this country to watch out for kitniot; and they would do well to label each product on the shelves as kitniot-free or containing kitniot.  I encourage everyone to bring gentle, polite and friendly pressure on the shop-keepers to do this for us.

5.  Until they do, I am worried that many people who want to keep Pesach properly but are not well-versed in these issues and may not be able to read Hebrew are likely unwittingly to bring into their houses for Pesach use products which they would not want to use if they knew the full story.

1. For the last few years I have relied on the London Eruv without any qualms. As my Rav whom I first consulted about the matter remarked, “Dayan Ehrentreu is a reasonably orthodox gentleman …”.

2. This week I received, unsolicited, a glossy booklet called “The Eruv HaMehudar in NW London” published by Friends of the North West London Eruv. Everything about it suggests spin worthy of a dodgy double-glazing firm. The result of its pages of selective quotations, questionable translations and effusive peroration is that for the first time ever I am seriously doubtful about the kashrus of the eruv. If it needs this kind of advertising propaganda, I seriously wonder whether there is not something wrong with it.

3. Before receiving this booklet it would never have occurred to me to try to assess the issues surrounding the eruv: that is a matter for rabbonim mumchim b’hilchos eruv, not for me. But this booklet purports to explain the reasons for the eruv’s kashrus b’hiddur and in effect invites me to consider them. So I have read it, and contrasted it with the commendably measured responses published in this week’s Jewish Tribune (a publication which I bought for the first time in many years for this purpose) from the Union of Orthodox Hebrew Congregations and a world-renowned Rov whose letter is printed in the booklet.

4. My conclusion is that this is clearly an eruv: but to call it mehudar, and to suggest that it is endorsed by the gedolei Torah generally, is seriously misleading: the kashrus of the eruv depends in essence on reliance on a single minority opinion of the Chazon Ish.

5. So those who rely on the eruv have something on which to rely, as well as Dayonim on whom to rely; and those who regard it as insufficient also have much on which to rely. I am now clear, which I was not before, that this is not a question of divisive politics on behalf of those who reject the kashrus of the eruv: they have strong grounds for believing that carrying within the eruv is genuine chillul shabbos.

6. In other words, we are in territory of eilu v’eilu divrei elokim chayim. Many who wish to be machmir in their shabbos observance will choose not to rely on the eruv; those who have particular family or other reasons to wish to rely on an eruv will probably continue to do so. The important thing is to ensure that both groups treat each other with sensitivity, understanding, respect and love.

It is my pleasure to inform readers of this blog that at long last, we have piled together every issue of the original newsletter that was The Sceptic Tank, and have begun the process of posting them on this blog. These will contain many classic writings of my father’s, including my personal favourite: “What if God’s a Christian?”

These will not show up as recent posts,  but by using the drop-down box marked “Older Rants” on the right-hand column, all posts as far back as the inaugural newsletter in October 2004 can be found.

As always, any comments will be gratefully received, whether about the content of the blog (please address to my father) or technical matters relating to it (can be addressed to me).

We hope you continue enjoying this site.

Yisroel Greenberg.

1. The British Jewish community is now in serious trouble, its right to have schools for Jews threatened on two sides. The High Court is about to decide whether JFS can apply its admissions criteria by reference to exclusively orthodox criteria of Jewish status. And the government has recently changed, and is currently in the process of a critical examination of the application of, the laws of selective admission as they relate to faith schools.

2. The surest way to resolve both crises is to determine whose fault they are.

3. In typical style the British Jewish community has already offered a number of possible public answers to that: the Chief Rabbi, the London Beth Din, the parents of the children challenging admissions.

4. In other words, everyone except the rank and file of the British Jewish community: but it is we who have brought this on our selves.

5. A reform leader went on the BBC Radio 4 this morning to explain that the JFS crisis is because orthodox rabbis do not recognise “all” decisions of the reform, so that “technically” the child is not Jewish.

6. An orthodox rabbi was asked to reply to that - so he said “Judaism is not a democracy - you have to abide by the rules.”

7. Which is the point. When judges or Ministers examine our community to see these selective rules in application, they will see that we enforce them strictly only against people on the outside looking in. Once a person is accepted as “technically” Jewish, they can eat what they like, do what they like, and nobody regards them as beyond the pale of the community. But the product of a reform conversion, who may observe more of the rules of kashrut than 90% of our community, who may pray to God more often than 95% of our community, is dismissed as unworthy to mix with our children because of being not Jewish.

8. This attitude is halachically sound, but spiritually bankrupt. While we as a community hold our own rules of religion in apparent contempt, why should we expect judges or Ministers to accord respect to any of them?

9. In the tochahah warnings, God warns that if we behave as if the world is without a ruler, He will allow the world to carry on as if it were. Here too, if we behave as though being Jewish is a matter of mere genetics, God will show us the emptiness and futility of that approach.

10. So the only real answer is, as always, nachpeso derochienu venoshuvo - to sort out our own communal behaviour. If we can live in a way which gives the impression that the rules of the Torah and the rabbis are worthy of respect, perhaps others outside the community will be encouraged to follow suit.

1.  This is a genuine - not rhetorical - question about the scientific theories of evolution (much of many of which is compatible with Torah thought).  It will display my complete scientific ignorance - but it may be possible for someone reading this to explain in easy lay terms what it is I want to know.

2.  If the process of evolution from micro-organisms to intelligent life was a completely natural one, why did some organisms only get to animal stage and then stop, while others went through the animal stage to become human?  Or, if no species has stopped evolving, is it thought that all species will eventually evolve human intelligence, and if so why are some doing it so much slower than others?

3.   Perhaps even the question doesn’t make sense in scientific terms and just shows how little I understand about the theories of evolution: but if it is possible for anyone to offer me a (polite) answer I will be very grateful.  Please use the comment bar.