JIB Awards

You may have noticed, looking to the right-hand sidebar - that I won two JIB awards for best posts. The links are under the badges. I must say, I'm darn proud of the Silver in the 'Best Torah Post' category, even though I don't think that post was even amongst my own top three Torah posts.

It's very gratifying when your original Torah is recognized. The JIBs are one way that happens. I've also received feedback from readers that I've never actually met - including one just today. It's often most gratifying when it's 'peer review' - comments and complements from fellow men of the cloth or whatever the Jewish equivalent is.

TSTBA

TSTBA

The minister said that he would not have decided to go to war had he known what its outcome would be.

Boy am I glad we have such smart, responsible leadership. I bet he wouldn't have even gotten on the Titanic had he known what its fate was.

Negiah.org

ON ONE HAND – readers of this blog know that I’m a big fan of open and honest confrontation of all sorts of Jewish issues, taking a cue (but not totally taking a cue) from R’ Kahana in Brachot – “It is Torah, and therefore we must learn it”. ON THE OTHER HAND, this website seems a bit bizarre. The goal is to treat adult subjects in an adult way, not adult subjects in a naarish way. I haven’t read the articles yet, but I don’t like the prospects.

Speaking of education, I think I have an idea – inspired by commenter elana – why the Shlah’s prayer became so popular recently: parents are looking for answers how to raise their kids, but are more looking for shortcuts than anything else. People invest a lot in their careers, etc., abd have unrealistic expectations about how far their tuition $$$ can really go. It’s a scary situation. Personally, I think that spending quality time with your kids can be really helpful in raising them. But hey, what the heck do I know. Go with the Shlah’s prayer.

And all of this leads me to the following statement, which is really so obvious that it should not need to be spelled out, but apparently does:

Parents should not blame schools/others for failing to do that which is essentially the parents’ job.

Shlah Awareness Day

Last Thursday, I received three separate email telling me about a special prayer, ostensibly composed by the Shlah, to be recited on the day before Rosh Chodesh Sivan. It happens to be a truly beautiful prayer, as are many of our prayers. It just so happens that this is the first I’ve ever heard of this prayer. The prayer petitions God for good children.

I have no idea why this thing caught on, but I think it’s a bit strange. I’m not a big believer in any kind of special mystical powers of any particular prayer, and in general think that the current schedule of prayers is a bit too heavy, and should be trimmed back. I think it would be nice to have a ‘Shlah Awareness Day’, and I guess that 29 Iyar is as good as any, though it’s a bit tough coming right after Yom Yerushalayim / Shmuel Hanavi Awareness Day (28^th of Iyar is ostensibly his yahrzeit and is observed by many as a minor holiday; thousands make a pilgrimage to Nebi Samwil, his ostensible tomb). I’m just weirded out by the sudden massive popularity that this prayer gained. I have no good explanation.

Bamidbar: Names and Numbers

There is a philosophical tradition from Aristotle to Sartre which seeks to mediate the tension between the individual as an individual and as a member of a group. This is a significant question on several levels: one can question the degree to which it is even possible to conceive of a separate individual identity in isolation from the world around – this completely independent of the question of individual rights. Aristotle’s characterization of man as a ‘political animal’ means that there is something fundamentally human about arranging in sociopolitical groups, just like it’s natural for hyenas to travel in packs and geese to fly in V-formation. Enlightenment philosophers (especially Hobbes) saw this as a function of self-interest; my own ‘enlightened self-interest’ dictates that I enter into a relationship with those around me rather than competing with them for resources. For them, my identity is fundamentally formulated as an autonomous individual, with certain concessions made to the fact that I must exist within a social group. At the other extreme stands Sartre, who denies that there’s such a thing as an autonomously constructed human being. My entire being is constructed socially, with reference to my ‘others’. Man as an absolute individual is not a man. My ‘I’, according to Sartre, develops as a response and reaction to those around me. It is impossible to conceive an identity in isolation from others.

As usual, the Torah and Chaza”l tend to formulate questions like this in non-discursive form (and it was only last century that people like Sartre began to acknowledge the superiority of narrative and myth in formulating ‘truth’). In a sense, it is the fundamental question of the Book of Bamidbar. It describes the structure of Israelite society, assigns roles, introduces different types of leadership and their failure. It begins with a census – an alienating, quantifying process which gives man identity as a statistic. The standard English title for the fourth book, in fact, is ‘Numbers’ – statistics, quantities.

Even so, right as the census is introduced, the Torah subtly acknowledges that it is ‘names’ that are being counted (1:2). In fact, there are more names and lists of names in Bamidbar than in any Biblical book other than genealogy-heavy Bereishit. The Israelites are constantly being named, and constantly being numbered throughout the book. A name is the ultimate symbol of individual identity and achievement. Someone ‘makes a name’ for himself. I rely on my good name professionally. It seems that the Torah is acknowledging the tension that exists between being a ‘name’ and being a ‘number’. There are several other verses which reflect this tension as well: “He counts all the stars by number, calling a name to each one” (Tehillim 147) – stars are addressed by name as well as by number; each aspect has something important to contribute.

We are used to thinking in binary terms – is my value as an individual, or as a member of society/community/state? Does the Torah/God view each of us individually, or all of us collectively? Can I ever treat a group of human beings as a single unit – a family, a country, a race? There are times that we seem to fall on either side of these questions. There are also certain Jewish thinkers more likely to fall on either side – when someone talks about ‘acceptable losses’, or compares loss of human life to amputation within a single organism (contributing to the ‘overall health’ of the organism), the individual is being defined first and foremost as the member of a group. There are other ideas and statements that seems to reflect the opposite – certain thinkers conceived things almost exclusively in terms of individual dilemmas, even when the recommended course of action for the individual would be disastrous for the community.

The Torah affirms each approach without necessarily formulating it in a binary way. After all, the problem is not so much a philosophical one, to be discussed and formulated in the ivory towers, but a very real tension that each of us lives with. The Torah is more concerned with providing paradigms – through law and narrative, primarily – for successful mediation of that tension, or successful integration of both perspectives. I can live with that tension successfully by developing attitudes and developing intuitions, even if I never pick up Hobbes or Sartre. I may understand myself better if I have a background in social philosophy, but ultimately my goal is to become comfortable with my role as an individual entity and also as a cog in the wheel. The psukim demonstrate that God sees us as both simultaneously. Commenting on the verse from Tehillim, the Midrash (Bamidbar Rabbah 11:7) says: “When the Holy One, Blessed be He calls them, he calls each by name, and they respond; it is impossible for flesh and blood to call out two names at once” – we are addressed by God both as members of a group and as individuals. This Midrash says that it is impossible for humans to achieve this: we can’t be a part and a whole at the same time. Perhaps not. But we can be aware that there is an ultimate resolution, and acknowledge that each perspective has value in various contexts.

Keep this tension in mind as we begin to read the Book of Bamidbar; it can make for some fruitful insight.

Last week, I mentioned Dr. Lewis Bernstein in a post about a Shabbat he spent at UMD, and that his daughter is a student there.

She was just diagnosed with Lymphoma. Please keep Yakira Rivka Bina Bat Gaya Shulamit Ahava in your thoughts and prayers. Her prognosis and attitude are both excellent.

Bendelach

We had a couple of seminary girls for Shabbat. One is a cousin of mine, the other her friend. In all, it was a really nice Shabbat. The girls are both students at a very ‘Bais Yaakov’ – oriented seminary in Jerusalem. Mainline American-style chareidi if ever there was one.

I noticed at some point on Friday night that each of them was wearing more than just the standard ‘red bendel’. They each had a few others as well. That intrigued me, so I started asking about them, but in my own somewhat sarcastic sort of way (“What religion are these bendelach a part of?”). I asked such a question, and nothing – and I mean, nothing – could have prepared me for the response I got:

I asked, “Is there a ‘Safe Darfur’ bendel?”
The response: “Who is Darfur?”

Neither of the girls had ever heard of Darfur. One of them had heard of the Sudan, but was completely unaware that anything of any significance was going on there. I explained a bit about the Janjaweed and the ethnic cleansing happening in the Sudan, but that’s really not the point, is it? I was simply amazed that the educational system teaching these girls can be so utterly oblivious to the rest of the world.

A Pseudo-intellectual D’Var Torah

I was reading one of those ‘divrei Torah that are distributed weekly by what seems like every organization in Israel. This one in particular was written by someone whom I’ve heard speak – a first class demagogue. What I read in this DT just annoyed me. Not because of the content, but because of the pretentiousness. The author is a pseudo-intellectual (Heb. ‘shvitzer’), and writes like one, too. To wit:

· He quotes Milton Friedman like he knows something about him, but speaks of him as though he’s still alive. The man died last October or November (and it was pretty big news). He’d have known that had he tried to give some minimal biographical detail, instead of just lauding him as “one of the greatest economists in the world”.

· Later in the essay, he refers to the same noted economist simply as ‘Milton’. Either he was on a first-name basis with a Nobel prizewinner a half-century his senior (but news of whose death eluded him for half a year and more), or he is getting the 20^th century American economist confused with the 17^th Century English poet. Probably trying to impress the Gushies.

· He referred to Tyrannus Rufus (presumably Quintus Tineius Rufus, Roman governor of Judea during the Bar Kokhba Revolt) as the ‘Gentile philosopher’. I know that people try to associate ‘Antoninus’, friend to Rabbeinu Ha-Kadosh, with Marcus Aurelius, but turning a brute like Rufus into a philosopher is just too much.

· Referring to the dialogue between Rufus and R. Akiva in Bava Batra 10a, he assumes that Rufus’ point was that it’s God’s job, not man’s job, to fight poverty. That’s not the point at all. His point it that poor people deserve to be poor, that we have no right to feed them if God doesn’t want to feed them.

· He notes that the Parsha (Behar) makes the point that ‘not everything is ours’. In my Chumash, the point is that NOTHING is ours.

· He makes really stupid and inaccurate blanket claims, like saying that nobody can really predict what the market will do and that justifications and reasons are only given post facto. Big talk from a rabbi, knocking down a pretty big industry of people making lots of money predicting – admittedly, with verying degrees of accuracy – what the market will do. That’s like criticizing a basketball player for missing half his shots. Of course nobody’s right every single time; you’re hoping for overall success, and people can and do show that they can do that. Point is, it’s just not smart to make big generalizations like that.

· He makes some kind of claim that ‘postmoderns’ would be enraged at the idea that people who say ‘what’s mine is mine and what’s yours is yours’ are like the people of Sodom. What does postmodernism have to do with anything? (mah inyan shmitah etzel har Sinai?!) Is he just trying to sound sophisticated?

Ultimately, the issue is that this guy is basically a high school teacher and demagogue. His job is to make 10^th grade boys think he knows jack, and he can probably do that with the average 10^th grader. But this dvar Torah goes out to people in the business community, adults, who know BS when they smell it. Every yeshiva has one or two of these guys – guys who read pop junk in the John so they can be the man with one eye in the land of the blind. One such bozo once tried to convince me that the Rambam wrote the Moreh in Ladino. Idiot. I’d prefer that these guys just remain silent and be thought fools than to open their pie-holes and remove all doubt (that’s a paraphrase).

Retranslations: A Pet Peeve

In my continuing work as a freelance translator, I get to do some interesting things. Yesterday I got to translate a newscast about a suspected police forgery. That was fun. The evidence looks pretty damning (Ben Chorin posed about it as well).

Then there was another translation. It was of a weekly dvar Torah, and it was horribly annoying because it violated two of my pet peeves.

The first was that it included a retranslation. A retranslation (as I use the word) is when there’s a quote that I’m supposed to translate back into its original language. It’s a real pain, because you actually have to find the original quote, which may be in some obscure place. That’s exactly what happened here. The author began the Dvar Torah with a quote from Milton Friedman on the paradoxical relationship that the Jews have with capitalism.

But it gets worse. He quoted the introduction to Friedman’s Capitalism and Freedom as the source of the quote. As is obvious in hindsight, but took a while to figure out the regular way, that quote would have no place in the intro to Friedman’s book in English, but would have PLENTY of reason to be in the intro to the Hebrew version of the book. Thanks for writing ‘from the translator’s/publisher’s intro. He makes it sound like Friedman himself is writing.

It also turns out that it wasn’t a quote, it was a paraphrase. After Googling a number of combinations of words which it seemed clearly had to be in the quote, and after growing sufficiently annoyed, I called a friend who is a professor of economics at a couple of colleges and universities here in Israel. He knew right away that it wasn’t from the book. I had figured that out by then, and already strongly suspected that it was in an article called “Capitalism and the Jews: Confronting a Paradox”. My friend had the article – actually used it in a course he taught on economics and religion. The actual quote was in the first paragraph.

To demonstrate, I will produce the original English, the Hebrew translation/paraphrase that I was working from, and my initial English translation, when it looked like I wouldn’t find the article:

Two propositions can be readily demonstrated: The Jews owe an enormous debt to free enterprise and competitive capitalism. For at least the past century, the Jews have been consistently opposed to capitalism and have done much on an ideological level to undermine it.

"מעטים האנשים אשר הפיקו תועלת רבה כל כך מהיוזמה החופשית ומהקפיטליזם התחרותי כמו היהודים, ומעטים האנשים אשר התנגדו בצורה כה עקבית לקפיטליזם ופעלו כה רבות כדי לערער את יסודותיו האידיאולוגיים כמו היהודים"

“There are few who drew so much benefit from free enterprise and competitive capitalism as the Jews, and few who so consistently opposed capitalism and worked so hard to undermine its ideological foundations as the Jews”

And you thought translations were just about shalom=peace chatul=cat.