The Highest Form of Flattery

Never mind.
Anonymous commenter is right. This post was a petty rant and not even worthy of a personal blog.

Yom Ha-atzma'ut on Thursdays only

Four years ago I  proposed that Israel should always celebrate Yom Ha-atzma'ut on Thursdays. Well, it turns out that the government is proposing just that!

On following the Orioles in Israel

Gary Rosenblatt's column on four generations of baseball fandom in his family got me thinking: those of us who made aliyah may have similar experiences, but with the added element that we are actually purveyors of this facet of American culture to our kids and, perhaps eventually grandkids.
I posted my thoughts on the Times of Israel and Camden Chat.

Same-Sex Unions and Intermarriage: Against as a Jew, For as a Citizen

Cross-posted to the Times of Israel.

Though it is not a new dilemma, the issue of same-sex marriage took on became a larger topic of public conversation just this week, in the wake of President Obama's endorsement of same-sex marriage.
The dilemma had taken a personal dimension just a few weeks earlier, when I was invited to the same-sex wedding of two former students.
I am torn, but ultimately feel the same way about this that I feel about civil unions in general in Israel: while I am against them personally and religiously, I believe that the state should not impose specific religious values on individuals.
Jewish law, halakha, does not recognize intermarriage or same-sex marriage, and views sexual relationships between Jews and non-Jews and between members of the same sex as forbidden, even sinful.
In Israel, religious bodies (not just Jewish ones) have controlled marriage, divorce, and by extension have established the boundaries of their religious communities since the Ottoman Period. It is an anomaly in a secular state apparatus (though there are still some in the Rav ZY Kook camp who imbue the state apparatus itself with religious significance).
Yet although this has been the state of affairs here for centuries, there are many reasons for even halakha-observant Israelis to oppose state enforcement of these halakhic considerations.In fact, whether separation of religion and state is conceived as protection of religion from the state or the individual from religion, exclusive religious control of marriage should be abolished.
With regard to the protection of the individual from the state, it goes without saying that the current system of religious control violates individual rights. In 1964, the United Nations adopted a convention on marriage that recognizes marriage as a human right. Since Israel upholds human rights and even enshrines them in its Basic Laws, the fact that the right to marry and found a family is not universally applied is deeply inconsistent.
The other side of the religion-state coin - the protection of religion from state - offers an even more compelling case for changing the system. As a result of the rabbinate's intimate involvement with this aspect of state functioning, it has become a wholly political entity, and has resulted in a situation in which conversion to Judaism - a purely halakhic issue - is subject to broad political debate and legislation. The absurdity of a secular state getting involved in the business of religious conversion could end tomorrow if there were a civil marriage option that allowed halakhic Jews and halakhic non-Jews (who often are equally Jewish in terms of background and culture) to wed.
Furthermore, by insisting on holding onto a very thin slice of governmental power, the rabbinate dooms itself to a much more profound irrelevance and contempt. By winning the marriage battle, they lose the much broader war for the hearts and minds of Jews. Installing a civil option will, hopefully, help rehabilitate the image and restore the relevance of halakha to broader Jewish life in Israel.
Same-sex marriage falls under the same rubric: it is increasingly acknowledged as being worthy of protection as a human right, like all marriage, and once a marriage option that functions independently of religion is established, there would be no reason to exclude same-sex unions from it.
I hope one day to marry off all of my children by means of huppah ve-kiddushin, according to the law of Moses and Israel. But the task of educating children about the importance of these values belongs to parents and communities, not to governments.

Confronting a Changed World: A Reading of the Rashbi Story, Part I

Dear friends and readers. Seven years ago, on this blog, I began a series of blog posts based on adult education classes I had given: a close reading of the Babylonian Talmud's version of the R. Shimon bar Yohai story. For several years now I have had in mind to rewrite that and other "Talmudic readings" that appeared on this blog and that I have taught, and perhaps even publish them in book form.

I have begun that process and hope to publish the book, tentatively titled Sage Stories: A Selection of Readings from the Babylonian Talmud. In honor of Lag Ba-Omer, I present below the first part of the Rashbi story (in its entirety, the Rashbi story will constitute three chapters of the book).

I would love your comments, feedback, and advice for publishing. I hope to write it in a way that is accessible to people with little or no talmudic background or familiarity with halakhic terms and concepts.

Without further ado:

Women of the Wall and Temple Mount Faithful: Strange Bedfellows?

Check out my latest on the Times of Israel - an ironic observation on Freedom of Religion at Judaism's holiest site.

The Best Passover Reads, 5772

A large part of what I do for JID is sift through hundreds and hundreds of items posted online in an effort to find the good stuff (which is then sifted further to post the best stuff). You would not believe how much Pesach-related material appears every year. Every local newspaper, Jewish and general, has something on it. There's not a lot to get excited about, but there is the occasional piece that makes you sit up and pay attention. Here are this year's Pesach pieces that quickened my pulse a bit:

1. 1. Leon Wieseltier's review of the New Ameratzishe American Haggadah. Yes, it's a hatchet job and he overstates the case, but the central critique seems to be that re-inventing the wheel (in this case composing a brand new translation of the haggadah) does not necessarily mean doing it better. It's part of a larger debate about innovation and conservatism (see, for example, Zak Braiterman's response to Wieseltier, and the earlier exchange between me and Braiterman).
2. Judith Shulevitz has a Levinasian reading of the Talmud's derivation of the requirement to seek out hametz with a light. The contrived scriptural acrobatics point toward a deeper theological anthropology. Terrific.
3. Howard Jacobson muses on the poem "Dayenu". Jacobson is the greatest living Jewish writer (in English). Here, he comes up with witty and profound sentences like: "The Dayenu is a series of self-generating conditional clauses, composed, if you like, in that most kop-dreying of all tenses, the Judaeo-hypothetic-preconditional, in which problems are imagined in advance of their occurring, imagined, indeed, in spite of their having been averted, and there is no fathoming the sequence of causation: Do our travails precede our giving thanks, or does our giving thanks occasion our travails?"
4. Thanks to S. of On the Main Line and Dr. Paul Shaviv of CHAT, we can now listen to Pesach tunes of 370 years ago. Read the whole story here.
5. This is not limited to one article, but it is certainly a trend: Pesach has long had a culture of chumra, but it seems that things may be starting to change (or maybe it's a function of my shifting vantage point). This year, I've seen popular pieces about a kezayit being the size of an olive, about scaling back what is included in kitniyot, about going easy on the Pesach cleaning, and about not using horseradish for maror (see also this earlier article; this last one is not really a kula, but when I was growing up the general sense was that horseradish was the "real" stuff and that lettuce was some sort of leniency). Trend or no?

That's it (so far) for 5772. Take a look at some posts of Pesach past for more goodies.

Haroset Ice Cream

Ben & Jerry's Israel has a seasonal flavor - haroset ice cream - available only at their factory outlet. I have sampled it, and review it at the Times of Israel, here.

Kitniyot and Common Sense: R. Zvi Leshem's Guide

Rabbi Zvi Leshem, whose English article on Kitniyot I embedded here last year, has updated this article this real. Considering that the article was viewed thousands of times, it seems to have served a purpose and spoken to a real need. He takes a balanced, commonsense approach (which confirmed a lot of the ideas I began outlining here). There's a definite trend afoot - at least in Israel - for Ashkenazim to take a long look at the restrictions of kitniyot and take back much of what has fallen under its rubric in recent generations. The the article by R. Yehuda Fris that appeared in Tehumin (which can be found at the end of this thread) remains the most comprehensive guide in Hebrew, but R. Leshem's Hebrew and English articles are well presented and easily accessible. Without further ado:

Kitniot

מנהג הקטניות