Monica

I find this position problematic because, really, is anything too great for God? Not only could Avraham have more sons (the promise to Avraham didn't mention Sarah), but after Sarah died he did. If Yitzchak had died, that would not automatically mean the end of the Jewish proposition as spelled out in God's promises to Avraham. It would, of course, have been a terrible thing for the people involved, but we're talking about a proto-national issue here, not a personal one.

After the study I remembered another case where this kind of reasoning comes up, and this time it's embedded in our liturgy. I've always been a little bothered by the part of the Pesach seder that says that if God hadn't taken us out of Egypt we would still be slaves there today. Really? God couldn't have decided that the next generation was worthy if the time wasn't yet right? Doesn't this claim show something of a lack of faith?

I decided to ask this seder question on Judaism.StackExchange to see what the folks there have to say. There are some interesting answers so far. Take a look if this interests you.

Disclosure and plug: the site is currently trying to increase traffic and is running a contest with a nominal prize (small gift certificate to a Jewish bookstore). If you click on that link you'll help me a little. That's not why I posted this entry (it started out as just the akeidah and morphed), but as long as I was talking about it anyway...

And on the subject of this contest, here is an interesting question about the use of e-readers that is somewhat related to a question about the use of a Kindle on Shabbat. There's good discussion here about the nature of e-ink and writing and kindling light. I'd like to see answers to all the questions I've linked here; maybe you can help. (Contest page with links to all entries is here.)

I do regret the loss of my congregation's tikkun, which was a coordinated program led by my rabbi and usually going until about 2. But I'm glad to have the community-wide one, where rabbis from all over come and teach classes. It gives me a chance to study with people I would never encounter otherwise, and I strive to go to classes taught by people who are new to me. Sure, it's unpredictable, but it's an adventure. :-)

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I recently came across rethinking egalitarianism and found myself emphatically saying "yes yes yes!" while reading. Excerpt:

Let's rethink what we mean by "egalitarianism." What if it meant "open to all who bother to make the effort"? What if synagogues distributed fliers that said: "Welcome! We are very glad you are here. Our service is somewhat traditional, because that traditional form works for us. You may be a little lost at first. So we warmly invite you to join our weekly Siddur 101 class, where you can learn the ropes." People who choose to accept the invitation obtain the rewards. Those who don't, don't. Not only would such an approach allow longtime participants to get more out of the prayer experience, but it would also suggest to newcomers that there's something worth working toward. Things that come cheap usually feel that way.

As I understand it, this is part of Rabbi Elie Kaunfer's argument in his recent book, "Empowered Judaism" (Jewish Lights Publishing). What the Jewish world needs, Kaunfer writes, is not more dumbing-down but more empowerment of individuals to opt in if they so desire. Before Kaunfer, this argument was Maimonides's: The best Judaism is really only for philosophers, but the opportunity to become a philosopher ought to be open to everybody.

American Jews have long prized education and knowledge. So why do we suddenly throw those values out the window when it comes to synagogue life? Is it really more inclusive to be patronized by a service aimed at the lowest common denominator?

hrj

ichur72

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At a meeting this week we read Psalm 23 in traditional and contemporary translations. (The latter was from Mishkan T'filah and I didn't find it online.) The leader asked us to react to it in any way we chose. After a little bit of clean-up, here is what I wrote:

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The husband of a member of the Debatable Choir posted video from our Pennsic performance.

I didn't know enough chemistry to fully parse this geeky comic by ohiblather, but I still laughed out loud when I saw it.

xiphias reports research that seems to be begging for an IgNobel award. As he points out, it's worthy because first it makes you laugh and then it makes you think. I mean, what publishable conclusion would you expect from researchers doing an MRI on a dead salmon?

I feel fortunate that "talk like a pirate day" fell on Rosh Hashana, meaning I was shielded from most of the antics. But I enjoyed top ten halachic problems for a Jewish pirate, forwarded by dglenn. Should I be worried that I have defensible answers for several of them?

Fun website mash-ups from metahacker and others. From one of the comments: "OKAmazon: People who had sex with this person also liked..."

Signal boost: kyleri makes hand creams, lip balms, soaps, and similar items, and she is currently having a sale. I bought some of her creams at Pennsic and am happy with the results.

I haven't turned off the spelling checker in Firefox on this machine yet because I do sometimes make typos that it catches, but this post almost made me do so. :-)

bitsy_legend

A few weeks ago BitDefender, my antivirus software, stopped working -- attempting to run a scan emitted a very unhelpful error message. Some time with Google showed me that lots of people were having that problem, and after some work I found and installed a patch. Today it shut down again, and after I tried all the new remedies suggested on a BD forum (lots more people are having this problem) I, in a moment of "it can't hurt" desperation, reinstalled the patch. (It should already be there, right?) And it started working again. I wonder what is going on. Customer support has been responsive but of mediocre quality so far. Ah well, one more reason to move to the new machine sooner rather than later. Once I have the Mac, I won't need the PC to be on the internet. And if I were staying with Windows, I'd surely replace BitDefender with something else when the annual subscription expires. (I have not, by the way, seen any evidence that the machine has actually been infected with anything.)

Signal boost: 530nm330hz has been developing his own siddur for personal use, and wants to know if enough people to justify a small production run are interested. The sample pages are quite lovely (a nice siddur can be more than just the words on the page); he's using color to effectively indicate variations for weekday, Shabbat, and festivals, and is laying it out in a way that sounds useful. Andrew's Orthodox, so it'll be a complete siddur.

This afternoon we saw a flurry of bicyclists cruising down our street. (There appears to have been some sort of organized activity, but I'm not sure what.) And, among them, I saw one guy on a huge unicycle. The wheeel was at least three feet across, possibly four. I wondered how one mounts a unicycle with a wheel diameter bigger than one's inseam. I don't yet have the internet in my pocket, so I had to wait until we got home to find out. Err, now that I know I'm even more impressed. I'm still not sure what you do about temporary stops, like red lights, though. It sounds like you need a hand-hold to get going; what do you do if none are available?

Quote of the day #2: "Always double-check your math if there are explosives involved", via kyleri.

Why aren't people commenting on my post? I've had this in a browser tab for a while waiting for a "misc" post to add it to, and I no longer remember where I got it.

It's a powerful film, and at some point I plan to borrow the DVD so I can watch it again. (Viewing conditions weren't great.) It raises many of the usual issues of theodicy, or how God can permit evil in the world, about which I've written some before.

This isn't a review; it's some reactions, not necessarily well-organized.

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This morning in torah study we talked about this part of Nitzavim: "And not with you alone will I make this covenant and this oath, but with him who stands here with us this day before the Lord our God, and also with him who is not here with us this day" (Deut 29:13-14). The context is Moshe's final address to Israel; we can prety much take as given that this is not referring to people who slept in that morning. The rabbis understand this as a source for the covenant being binding on all Jews, the ones who stood at Sinai as well as those who came later. In other words, Judaism claims you by virtue of your birth. (I knew that, of course, but I learned a new term for it: "birthright dogma".)

This is hardly unusual; some other religions do this either as a birth condition or based on an action that your parents take very soon thereafter. We say "once a Jew always a Jew"; the Roman Catholic church says the same thing once you've been baptised. Surely there are others. (I'm not sure if Muslim status is automatic at birth; I have the impression it is.)

Some modern Jews have a problem with this, but I don't. We're born into other obligations that we got no say over; why should this be different? The issue to me isn't what you're born to but what you're going to do about it and what anyone else can or should do about it. As a convert from one "we claim you forever" religion to another, I find myself in an interesting position.

There are folks out there who try to preach obligation to the people they see straying -- and that just doesn't work. The church thinks I'm a lapsed, sinning Catholic -- fine for them, but I don't care, because I don't subscribe to their belief system. That they think they have a claim on me means nothing to me; I think they're wrong. (No offense meant to my Catholic readers, of course.) Any attempt to reach me via the "but you have to" path would utterly fail. (Ok, any attempt to reach me at all would fail now, but there might have been times in my life when that was not true.) And we have this in Judaism too; there are people who are very concerned with bringing back those who've strayed by going down the "obligation" path. Going down the "benefit" path is much more likely to be productive. You'll almost never succeed (long-term) in intimidating people, but if you can show them the beauty, fulfillment, or richness of a religion or tradition, you might hook them. Chabad, for all its other problems, gets this; the people who stone cars on Shabbat do not.

If status is forever, then we should be picky about entrance criteria when we can be. If a gentile eats bacon cheeseburgers on Yom Kippur, so what? But once he becomes a Jew, he's sinning. if the members of the beit din (the rabbinic court) think he's not committed, they can and should tell him "not now". This is part of why Judaism requires a significant period of study and evaluation, which can take years. The rabbis on the beit din need to assure themselves that they aren't making things worse for K'lal Yisrael (the community of Israel), while of course also weighing the issues of the individual candidate. As a candidate I expected that kind of rigor and would have been unhappy if I hadn't gotten it. (In fact, during my studies I met one local rabbi who said "I always say yes", and I made sure that rabbi was not on my beit din.)

Somehow from here we ended up talking about interfaith families, but that's another set of topics for another time.

(Let me note in passing how challenging it is to write a post on this specific topic. Any mistake demonstrates something I failed to learn, y'know? But onwards...)

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