The Ugly Hungarian
The Municipal Theatre of Eger (a Hungarian provincial town) forbid the visit of the Budapest Madach National Theatre because one of its actors is .. Jewish. They (or maybe it was only the papers) said that they were only applying the1920 Law of Numerus Clausus, that among other restrictions forbid Jewish actors's access to national theater, journals, films, etc.
Az MSZP numerus clausust emleget
Above (in Hungarian): "The MSZP remembers the Numerus Clausus". The MSzMP is the Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party, otherwise known as the Communist Party that ruled Hungary between 1956 and 1989. The Communist Party of Hungary was founded and manned by Jews who had repudiated their religion and their national origin. I expect all Hungarian Communist Jews still living to repent and to meet them in the synagogue at Yom Kippur, beating their chests begging the community's and God's pardon for their errors, crimes and sins. I am glad that my Father z"l was not among them.
57 comments:
Funny thing, the same happened with the Communist Party in Russia, and the Christian church before them.
Funny it is not. We Jews never learn. Except for Zionism, which proclaims that Jews whould save themselves and not the world.
Of course it's funny. We have this immense power locked within us by the religious lifestyle. It is hard to believe those miserable scraggly creatures ever amounted to anything or ever will again. Carlyle had his bit about the rag merchant Jews and the terrible fate that awaits a people which turns its back on its destiny. But...Sans the lifestyle, we go Incredible Hulk and wreck the world. Later, stunned survivors go "what the hell did we do?"
As for secular Zionism, it created a country and died. Religious Zionism has yet to come into its own. I think that when it does, it will change the world again.
And you could be wrong, B. Religious Zionism might become the dominant faction, but that doesn't mean that horrible unanticipated consequences might not result. You believe there is great intellectual potential and that it will be unleashed in domains that can bring prosperity to Israel. Their energies could just as easily be limited to religious fanaticism and provoke a resource-sapping regional war. You are making a leap of faith, and you may turn out to be wrong.
From an outside perspective, I would say that the strength of the Jews through recent history has been the capacity to maintain ethnic solidarity (assisted by organised religion), coupled with the propagation of a curiosity-driven, risk-taking culture (generally impeded by organised religion).
As a result, there is an inherently ambivalent attitude to orthodox religion, which is clearly evident in the pages of this blog.
Anon.
I may turn out to be wrong, but I will not turn out to be a coward whose life amounts to waiting patiently for his decades to be up so that he can die of natural causes without undue suffering.
Tell me, Anonymous (you might as well get a name-your "fist," as the cryptographers put it, is as good as a signature,) have you ever worried that you have been given a great gift and are squandering it in ant-like scurrying among the smell of mildew? Have you ever thought that you might be called to account for willful mediocrity? This fear has driven me my whole life, and I wonder if you've felt it.
My parents had "interesting" lives for the 1st half of their lives - they got to see new countries, to "camp" out, etc. For their rest of their lives what they wanted most of all was to live a quiet life. The day before he died, my father asked me to plant garlic because it was garlic planting time. Even if he wasn't going to be there to eat it, life would go on, the cycle of the seasons would go on. Ants are not dishonored by ant-like scurrying - that's their job. Nietzschian superman fantasies are a recipe for disaster.
K
Fascism is a spent cause in Europe. These guys are just playing dress-up fascist, like the guys with the operetta uniforms and funny mustaches. The real enemies of the Jews today live in other places, like Teheran.
K
B,
You are being too hard on Anonymous. What you call "willful mediocrity" others may call a life of mitzvot, a life dedicated to study.
As I see it, receiving a gift like beauty or intelligence does not limit your freedom to do what you want. If a beautiful Jewish girl chooses to marry and build a family in Israel instead of becoming a movie star, will she be called to account for willful mediocrity?
J,
A life of mitzvot is something different than what Anonymous talks about. He hopes for assimilation so that the mean goyim won't beat his descendants up; furthermore, it is, according to him, likely that he won't have descendants since he lives where he can find work in his specialty and it is difficult to find a girl there.
Nobody said anything about being a Nitzschean ubermensch. I think that marrying and building a family is much more honorable and proper than aspiring to be a movie star. Planting garlic even though you won't be there to gather it is only proper (and parallels a story in the Talmud about Honi and the carob tree planter.)
As for intelligence-receiving intelligence doesn't mean that you can't do manual labor or whatever, but it does mean that you shouldn't reduce yourself to the level of a dumb animal, working to eat and eating to work until you die, and motivated primarily by the avoidance of suffering.
"Have you ever worried that you have been given a great gift and are squandering it in ant-like scurrying among the smell of mildew? Have you ever thought that you might be called to account for willful mediocrity?"
Not exactly, although I can sympathize with your sentiments. I am engaged in honorable work from which I derive both a sense of purpose and, most of the time, fulfillment. I do my best not to engage in "Nietzchian superhuman fantasies" because, like K, I consider them to lead too often to disaster. It's easier for me to accept this because I don't believe in God or the supernatural and have a very good sense of how unimportant I am (and we all are) in the scheme of the universe. But I don't use that as an excuse to lead a nihilistic life as that would be unenjoyable for me.
"He hopes for assimilation so that the mean goyim won't beat his descendants up"
That is a mischaracterization of my views, B. First of all, not all gentiles are mean and not all Jews are nice. I don't hope for assimilation, but I don't care to resist it because Judaism isn't very important to me. I don't believe its mythology, I don't like the religious customs (other than the family meals), and I don't like the leftism of so many secular Jews. The survival of Judaism is ultimately of no great consequence. The world will go on if it dies out, just as it has done following the deaths of countless cultures. You view the issue more emotionally because you feel attachment to Judaism and accept the religious dogma about being "chosen" for a special purpose by God. I think that business is just human-invented propaganda, of an ancient pedigree in this caes, to build group solidarity.
Basically I do agree with your weltanschauung : the universe is pointless, the Milky Way galaxy is evolving towards a black hole, the Sun is going to be a red dwarf and reduce Earth to molten debris. We are nothing in the large scheme of things and we have no purpose. Yet, Anonymous, "you are not allowed to break the chain". If only for respect to your parents and grandparents, you should do the small effort to go the Jewish thing going on to the unknown future.
Then, I promise you, you will have no time nor energies for nihilism. Children need attention and you are built to provide it and will. Do what you were built to do.
It's not clear whether men were really built to give attention to children. In some societies and among some social groups they have nothing to do with child rearing. Or else the men doing the rearing are not necessarily the biological fathers.
But A is obviously a person of high intelligence. It would be a pity to see his genes not passed on while stupider people reproduce. We need more little A's.
A corollary to that is that Judaism provides an excellent framework for raising children. Even if you don't believe all the sky magic stuff in the least, Judaism has a well developed ethical and moral framework that is time tested for continuity. Our knowledge of science has increased but human nature has not - we are the exact same humans as wandered in the desert with Moses. All the human emotions are exactly the same. So the insights into human nature in the Torah and Talmud remain valid today.
K
>The survival of Judaism is ultimately of no great consequence. The world will go on if it dies out, just as it has done following the deaths of countless cultures. You view the issue more emotionally because you feel attachment to Judaism and accept the religious dogma about being "chosen" for a special purpose by God.
You've got it backwards. The survival of Judaism is a sure thing (as promised by the Torah and borne out by the 3000+ years of history since its giving,) and of great consequence to the world. You can choose to participate in that process or not, but it's a fact.
You're demonstrating your indoctrination, B. The Torah was not "given" by God, and its composition, by human authors, dates back less than 3,000 years. Its "guarantee" of Jewish survival is somewhat problematic in that its authors, certainly the priestly ones anyway, wouldn't recognize the Judaism that has been practiced for ca. 2,000 years. That's debatable, but what isn't is the idea that eternal Jewish survival, implying survival well beyond our date, is a "sure thing." Likewise, how the degree of Judaism's consequence to the world is debatable. I would say that it has been of great consequence in the past due mostly to its offshoots. The Jewish religion is not so important now and not likely to be so important in the future on a world scale, although perhaps on a regional scale if the haredim embroil Israel in a regional war (if they become politically dominant).
For such a small people, the Jews have been at the center of world history for a long time and appear to remain so, for better or worse. Maybe for the last 2,000 years as object more than subject, but Israel has changed that.
There are minorities in India, China, etc. that are more numerous than the Jews and nobody can even pronounce their name, but 1/2 the activity of the UN concerns the Jews.
K
K,
Israel hasn't changed "object more than subject." Virtually all of the UN activity you cited consists of Arab states and non-Arab Muslim states introducing resolutions against Israel and Zionism that they bully other 3rd world hellholes to support.
What is indoctrination? Is it any system of thought you don't agree with? As far as I can see, you are the one who's been indoctrinated by your upbringing to believe certain things (only those things you can poke with a fork or draw on paper are real, all groups of people are fundamentally equal, etc.) I was raised with the same a priori principles, but have chosen to turn my back on them for something better and more descriptive of reality as I perceive it.
Your counterarguments vis-a-vis the difference between today's Judaism and that of 3,000 years ago are not worthy of lengthy discussion. I will point out only that though you no longer wear diapers and can speak in complete sentences, you are the same person you were when you were a year old.
As for Judaism's consequences-no Judaism=no Jews. No Jews=no 20th century physics, no Communist International, a very different set of social sciences, etc. This aside from the offshoot religions, which, of course, changed the world drastically. We change the world continually, whether we want to or not, for better or worse. I don't think that you can choose whether or not you will participate in this process, only the quality of your participation-see the story of Samson, for instance.
You can't prove the "truth claims" of Judaism, B, but you privilege the religion's textual source and state them as if you could.
I don't necessarily believe that all groups are equal, but I'm hardly convinced that Jews are the most superior group. Moreover, even if we were, the position of Jews' in relation to others throughout history ranges from constricted to nightmarish insecurity, and there is no way out. Even Zionism provides an unsatisfactory solution. Israel is a pariah state in the desert at the periphery of the world. It's creation was hardly a total win for the Jews.
"no 20th century physics"
Planck, Heisenberg and Dirac weren't Jewish. Jews contributed significantly to 20th century physics, but they were not the only source of progress in the field. And there would have been no 20th century physics without what came before, to which Jews contributed little.
The position of Jews' in relation to others throughout history ranges from constricted to nightmarish insecurity...
Where do American Jews currently fall on this spectrum? While maybe not up to the antisemites' standards, I sort get the feeling that we are among those running the show.
Israel may not be as insecure as you think. Having a large stash of nuclear weapons sure is a great insurance policy, on top of a formidable conventional force. Even if the Iranians get their own, this is a recipe for stalemate, not checkmate. Israel is making rapid advances in anti-missile technology, so Iran and Hezbollah may have wasted untold treasure on rockets that are now worthless.
The 20th century was tough on Jews but if you look at the big picture they went in stateless and as a despised minority and left with their own nuclear armed state and a substantial position of wealth, acceptance and influence in the Rome of our time. Compare this to for example the Gypsies who went in stateless and as a despised minority and left stateless and as a despised minority. Nisht schlecht (not bad) I'd say.
K
>I don't necessarily believe that all groups are equal, but I'm hardly convinced that Jews are the most superior group.
Who said anything about "superior"? Is a german shepherd superior to a greyhound? By some parameters, yes, by others, no. Different functions, different abilities. A greyhound trying to herd sheep is a ludicrous and undignified sight.
>Moreover, even if we were, the position of Jews' in relation to others throughout history ranges from constricted to nightmarish insecurity, and there is no way out
By man's very nature, he is constricted in his options and insecure. Every nation, given enough time, undergoes weakness, massive suffering and eventually extinction (where are the Romans today?) Yet we survive.
Furthermore, Israel is hardly a desert, and the Eastern Med is hardly a periphery. I did not sense from the Israelis that they were nightmarishly insecure or particularly constricted. I think you would benefit from a visit. It would do you good to see Jews secure in their own skin.
I agree w. B. AMerican Jews tend to run either toward or away from their Jewishness. For Israelis, Jewishness is just there - when you wake up in the morning you are Jewish. You don't have to do (or not do) anything special to prove or disprove it. Even if you never set foot in a schul, you are still Jewish. In the US, if you treat your Jewishness this way, chances are pretty good that you will be the last Jew in your line.
Despite the existential threats, I think I'd rather be Israeli now than say Greek. In fact, if Israel was not dominated by socialists in its early days, I'd be Israeli right now (actually there would be no me since my parents met in the US). My uncle's experience w/ the Israeli authorities caused him to write to my father and tell him not to come, which he had every plan of doing up to that point.
K
K,
The Jewish exit to the 20th century was impressive, but it could have been better. The state Jews got is a tiny, hot strip of desert surrounded by basket case countries filled with hostile backward Arabs. Not far away are hundreds of millions of sub-Saharan Africans who can literally walk all the way there. Granted, they are dealt with harshly, but it would be nice not to have such neighbors. To the extent that Israel doesn't seem like a desert, it is because of strict water use regulation and the ingenuity of people like J. However, it's still not as pretty a place as Europe or the verdant parts of North America, and it likely never will be.
The nuclear scenario is tricky. The Iranis only have to get one hit to knock Israel out. It would take a lot more to cripple the Iranis. I know that Israel has submarine-based nuclear strike capability, but it seems to me that if the Israelis resort to that after a successful Irani nuclear attack, it's basically a Samson option last ditch effort, and Israel's existence might be out of the game even if that mission succeeds.
Even if you never set foot in a schul, you are still Jewish. In the US, if you treat your Jewishness this way, chances are pretty good that you will be the last Jew in your line.
That's ok to those of us who don't believe in the religion or particularly like the culture. Much worse things could happen. Maybe the gentile great-great-grandchildren will remember their Jewish ancestor fondly. At least the Jewish ancestory will have genetic continuity. That's much better than the deal the Auschwitz inmates received, and what happened to them could eaaily happen to Jews again.
>The Jewish exit to the 20th century was impressive, but it could have been better
As the Russians put it, the dick in another's hand is always bigger.
> The state Jews got is a tiny, hot strip of desert surrounded by basket case countries filled with hostile backward Arabs.
The state the Jews got is the land to which they have a Biblical claim by virtue of their identity. Do you have any claim to Iowa or wherever you live? You will always be a stranger squatting on someone else's land at their pleasure.
>Maybe the gentile great-great-grandchildren will remember their Jewish ancestor fondly. At least the Jewish ancestory will have genetic continuity. That's much better than the deal the Auschwitz inmates received, and what happened to them could eaaily happen to Jews again.
Isn't that exactly what I said your position was in the first place? "He hopes for assimilation so that the mean goyim won't beat his descendants up."
I would like to point out, though, that not a single Jew living in hot, arid Israel, surrounded by psychotic Arabs during WW2 was put in the camps or shot by an einzatsgruppe. Unlike those who chose to stay in verdant Europe with civilized European neighbors.
"Isn't that exactly what I said your position was in the first place?"
That's not why I'm detached from Judaism, B. As I've said several times, I don't like either the orthodox variant of the religion or the liberalism common in the secular Jewish community. You could promise me that there would never be another anti-Jewish persecution, and I would still be so alienated from Judaism and the Jewish community that I wouldn't care to perpetuate either. And I'll say it again, I'm unlikely to have children, so I'm not as personally concerned about potential "mean goyim" of the future. For the fence-sitters who don't share my worldview, who do accept some of the religious dogma or who just feel attached to the Jewish community, it is something to consider.
So, you are beyond just apathy. You go out of your way to encourage other Jews not to perpetuate Judaism or the Jewish people. Fascinating.
As I said before, Jews in the Diaspora cannot assume a neutral position regarding Judaism - even assuming an neutral position is not really neutral. You either have to run toward your Judaism or away from it.
There is no real danger to American Jews - not for the last 200 years and not likely in the future either. But some people run away anyway. My father faced the real thing. He stood on the rampa before the good Dr. M. After the war was over my father could have rushed to the nearest church for baptism to save himself and his offspring from a repeat engagement. But this was the last thing on his mind. You could say that to do so would be rational, but you could also say that it is cowardly.
K
If a man has no faith, pride or honor, why would he see any reason to shun cowardice?
You're one of the only people around here who actually believes the religious nonsense, B. J is a cynic about religion, but he appreciates the haredim because they provide what he really cares about, numbers. As for pride and honor, are ethnicity and religion the only sources of those for you? Why should one feel pride about being born Jewish rather than based on what one does in life? I must have hit a nerve as you've gotten touchy lately.
The truth is not subject to consensus. Don't even try to play that "nobody else agrees with you" junior high school bullshit. For the last ten years, I've walked and lived in places you've only seen on TV and dealt with people you only read about-I've anted up everything I've had, and have earned the right to an opinion. As for J-he, like me, understands that man doesn't live by bread alone. In some part thanks to his insights and regrets, I can make the choices I make.
You don't understand the concept of honor-it's not your accomplishments that are the source of honor and pride. Honor and pride in your own nature have to be fundamental to any accomplishment. You are what you are, and if you hate that, no plaque, accolade or achievement are going to be worth a shit. You'll always have that hollow place inside, no matter what external nonsense you achieve.
The reason that my estimation of you has fallen is that I've realized that you're not just someone who's searching for the truth-you're someone who's embraced a poisonous lie, and worse, seeks to sell it to others. You repeat the same faux-cynical bullshit ad nauseum-"being a Jew is no big deal, the religious Jews are idiots, the secular Jews are Communists, assimilate or your kids will go to the ovens."
You aren't satisfied being a Nitzschean Last Man, you want everybody else to sink to that level of alienated mediocrity. It makes me sick-it's not enough that you wallow in pseudonihilistic bullshit, purchased from the Wal-Mart of postmodern philosophy, everybody else must consume it too, to make you not feel so bad about your choice. You're like a Typhoid Mary, dude.
I read these threads, really not posting. But I just have to say, B nailed Anonymous' misery and pathetic surrender so perfectly! Which he's demonstrated here for months.
Truth is, Anonymous, B's done you a favor. Indeed, a mitzvah. (And I'm very secular!).
ram
I think B is being a little bit hard on Anonymous. I don't get the feeling that A. stands on street corners and tries to get people NOT to put on tefillin.
As for his own feelings, I appreciate that he is being honest with us and not giving lip service to things that he cannot really embrace. I understand his position. Although I have tried to inculcate my children in a "third way" which is not Hasidism and not atheism, to be honest I am not optimistic that there really IS a viable middle path for American Jews that does not lead to the oblivion of Jewish identity in a few generations, whether I like it or not. But I did not have the heart to send my children to a yeshiva either - I just can't buy into a lot of their BS. My parents grew up in a world that was organically Jewish and they could not buy into a lot of the stuff that the rebbes have invented or dug up since the war - they saw it as a racket - heckshers on things that never needed a hecksher, not working and living on food stamps, etc. They were as Jewish as anyone and this was not their Judaism - it was some made up hyperJudasim that exists as a reaction to the war. If A.'s idea is that if we disappear the mean goyim won't beat us up again, then the new Haredi idea is that if we make ourselves into uberYidn then Adonai won't beat us up again. I can't buy that one either.
Maybe J is right and the solution is to make aliyah where you are Jewish just by existing, but my family has made a comfortable life in America. In the end, most people, except for a handful of committed Zionists (often religious), move to Israel for economic reasons or because they are threatened. Although J apparently hopes that this will apply to America soon (God forbid I say), we are not there yet. So where does this leave those who are neither willing to embrace Orthodoxy or to make aliyah? I'm afraid that A.'s conclusions are not far wrong even if they are not what we would like to hear.
K
>Maybe J is right and the solution is to make aliyah where you are Jewish just by existing, but my family has made a comfortable life in America.
No comment.
>So where does this leave those who are neither willing to embrace Orthodoxy or to make aliyah?
On a fast train to nowhere.
>Although I have tried to inculcate my children in a "third way" which is not Hasidism and not atheism
What are you talking about, dude? There are plenty of other movements in Orthodox Judaism besides Hasidism. Litvaks, Modern Orthodox, Sephardim all have shuls in the tiny community where I am currently living. I daven with all of them as well as the Chabad guys. I can learn something from all of them, and build my own way from a synthesis of what I see as their best parts. But if the "third way" you choose is basically halfassing it, then you can't be surprised when it fails.
As for hecksherim, etc.-it is true that much of this is bullshit aimed at providing a living for various "rabbis" and their relatives (though it is equally true that unless you are very well educated in food science, it is hard to tell which "natural flavors" come from, say, shellfish.) Which doesn't mean that eating at Pizza Hut is now cool. If your Judaism goes only as far as your convenience and isn't worth a Meat Lover's Special, how can you expect positive results? Of course many kids who grow up with this kind of hypocrisy (driving from Yom Kippur evening services to a Chinese restaurant) throw the whole thing in the trash-why keep something that's completely discredited?
B, you are clearly an "all in" kind of guy and I am a half-assed guy. I admit it. I would not put myself in the field of fire if you paid me. I am willing to live with a certain level of contradiction and paradox as part of the human condition.
I think we (humans, not just Jews) are a weird accident of evolution, a freakish race of especially clever monkeys. The Jews doubly so. Adonai did not create us on the 6th day, he did not make Chava from Adam's rib. There is much to be learned from the wisdom of the rebbes, I love my Yiddishkeit and know that my father stayed alive just to spite the fucking Germans and so that the Jews would live on, but in the end I can't buy the package and daven every Monday and Thursday and shabbos and yom tov. I don't think there is a guy up there who gives a shit whether I put pepperoni on my pizza or not or whether the cheese is chalav yisroel and this same guy let the Germans put my grandparents and aunts into the gas vans at Treblinka. Something does not compute. I wish I could believe, but I can't. I'm sorry.
K
As far as "food science" goes, I've told this story here before and I'll tell it again: when my father first came to the US he worked in the meat packing industry. One plant that he worked in that produced corned beef, pastrami, etc. had a kosher side and a non-kosher side, with a wall separating them. Every Thursday they would get a lot of orders from delis, etc. for the coming weekend. Sometimes the plant would be short on one side or the other and they did not want to disappoint their regular customers. If they were short on kosher items, the boss would call over the mashgiach. "Hey, Rabbi, why don't you go get a cup of coffee" and hand him a $5 bill. (A cup of coffee cost a dime in 1955). You can guess what happened next.
K
K is right, I don't stand on street corners. The only experience I have had with Jews proselytizing on street corners has come from the other direction. Where I attended college, Lubavitchers stationed themselves at high-traffic points on campus and tried to "spread the word" to passers-by whom they thought might be Jewish. It was rather awkward, frankly. I have never seen secular Jews stage such a spectacle of a "mission" to the ultra-Orthodox.
I'm really not that interested in proselytizing. However, I do react negatively to attempts to "convert" the secular. I've registered my opinions here in the past largely to dissent from J's idea that Orthodoxy, the faith principles of which he doesn't accept, should be cynically foisted on others primarily with the aim of boosting Jewish numbers. Sorry, that's rank hypocrisy, as K has also pointed out. I also don't think that all Jews would be happy making aliyah (or that Israel would actually be able to support the numbers involved other than as paupers). K iss not alone in interpreting some of J's comments as almost hopeful that things in America will go down the tubes and force us to emigrate. I suppose that I react more negatively to this than he does.
I agree with K that B is an "all-in" kind of guy, and I think that's the source of a lot of our differneces. I'm just never going to come around to his way of thinking about the Jewish religion or the optimal future for the Jewish poeple. I don't believe in God or the supernatural, and the "proofs" that the religious offer for their faith don't convince me. Lacking that faith in God or the divine imprimatur of halacha, it's very hard to justify living an Orthodox life. It's just not going to happen.
Plenty of people see the creation story in Bereishith as allegory, yet observe Halakha (Rabbi Slifkin is a prominent example.) The two are not linked tightly, necessarily. I do not see how believing in, e.g. evolution precludes me from playing by rules proven to work from an evolutionary standpoint.
Yes, even when you try to do the right thing, occasionally shitheads mess it up for you. Look at the Monsey chicken scandal, where the whole town got new dishes and cookware and fasted. There are force majeure factors beyond your control sometimes. But that is a ridiculous excuse to use for not trying to do the right thing. The Holocaust thing I won't even discuss-I can't really improve on the Book of Job in the exposition of why bad things happen to good people.
When I was a kid, I grew up on a chicken farm and we used to take the chickens to a schochet - a saintly Jew with a long white beard who spoke only Yiddish, even to his African American assistant/ chicken plucker. We would watch him kill the chickens and then we knew that they were kosher. Kashrut and an industrial food supply are incompatible with each other due to "moral hazard". A kosher chicken costs twice as much (or more) than a treyf chicken but they are basically indistinguishable from each other (especially if you take the trouble to kasher (salt) the treyf chickens, which the putz in Monsey didn't even bother to do, but nobody noticed anyway, for a while at least). A dead chicken is a dead chicken. A treyf corned beef looks just like a glatt corned beef. Even scientific testing cannot tell them apart. It is beyond human nature for people not to give in to temptation to sell one for the other as long as this price gap remains. So, I'm sorry to say, the Monsey incident is just the tip of the iceberg. If you are really interested in eating kosher chicken I suggest that you do as we did and find yourself a reputable shochet and some live chickens and THEN you'll know that you are eating kosher food. Otherwise you are just fooling yourself half the time.
K
K,
Being close friends with a shochet whose shechita is eaten by EVERYBODY (Satmar AND Chabad,) who started his work under Brezhnev and whose moral standing is beyond my reproach, I am aware of the issues that occur in the industry. I aspire to the standard of eating only meat shechted by someone I personally trust. I'm not there yet, but I am trying.
However, I have to say that I think better of Jews than that. Some give in to temptation, but most don't. The fear of Heaven and a personal pride mean a lot in the Orthodox community-even more than money.
Think all you want. A beard is no guaranty of honesty. For every tzaddik there are 10 ganefs and 100 in between. This makes the frum no better and no worse than any other humans. People were no better in the shtetls but they had less opportunity to cheat and steal. If you look at, for example, the rules concerning contact between the sexes, you can see that the rabbis understood that humans are just human and prone to giving into temptation when only hashem is watching. So they tried to construct a society where opportunities for temptation were lessened. Once you disintermediate and depersonalize and blah, blah, blah it become much easier.
K
B,
Rabbi Slifkin has taken a lot of heat in "right-wing" Modern Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox circles for his beliefs. Acceptance of evolution is not normative in Orthodox circles, and given the common lamentation among the frum-skeptic bloggers that I have read that the trends in Orthodoxy are moving towards ultra-Orthodox practice, I doubt it will ever be uncontroversial.
Evolution isn't the only thing that many secular, Reform or Conservative Jews might find unpalatable about Orthodoxy. Most of us cannot accept Maimonides' thirteen ikkarim (e.g. resurrection of the dead, coming of the messiah, divine preservation of the Torah, truth of the prophets' words). A significant fraction of us don't believe in God. These are just non-starters for an Orthodox life for those who were not born to it. Yes, one can live an Orthoprax lifestyle, but many of the frum-skeptic bloggers who tried that found it unpleasant. I certainly feel no urge to move in that direction. Please try to understand that your preferences and beliefs are not universally shared, and they will never be.
Anonymous,
Since you've taken youself out of the game, you can see how your opinion isn't necessarily relevant in the long term. If you don't believe in G-d, then Judaism won't work for you, your descendants will peter out or assimilate, and you will go extinct. So, what's the question?
Arguably, he will have MORE descendants, because they won't be persecuted. They just won't be Jewish descendants. His distinctively Jewish genes will dissolve into the mass of goyish humanity. Arguably, America is re-segregating genetically along class/intelligence lines (the sort of people who get jobs at Google don't marry the sort of people who work at Walmart) but that new class will have maybe 20% Jewish genes at best.
K
There is a dysgenic trend among the social class (upper-middle America) which he will assimilate into.
Dysgenic trend? How so? As long as the enrollment of the Ivies keeps marrying each other, the resulting high IQ Jewish/WASP/Asian mish mosh will probably have hybrid vigor and be better than any one alone.
K
People don't have many kids, some of those kids are encouraged to embrace alternate forms of sexuality, etc.
I don't see any evidence that the ultra-high IQ tail is dying out, though it is certainly becoming more Asian and less Jewish from what I can tell, especially in the STEM fields. Although this may be because the Jews are rich now and don't want to do the hard work for small rewards - easier to be an anthropology major and get a "job" with an NGO while your parents subsidize you.
K
Look up average number of children per woman correlated with education level.
The haredi/hasid birthrates are unsustainable, B. In both the U.S. and Israel, their communities are heavily subsidized. The economies of both places may not support those subsidies for much longer. In the case of Israel, the secular Jews may weary of supporting those who so aggressively speak about replacing them and antagonize them when they drive on the Shabbat or are unlucky enough to live in a neighborhood with too many of them.
The correlation between number of children per woman and education level is interesting. Audacious Epigone posted about it recently. One way to short circuit that trend would be to move away from university credentials in favor of proficiency tests, but the presence of NAM's in the U.S. who would consistently do poorly on these tests assures that that solution won't be implemented. But college costs are rising so quickly that eventually even the upper middle class won't be able to afford it. Crisis will bring change to the system, we just don't know exactly the exact character of those changes.
Also, you both forget that I'm unlikely either to marry or have children. I'm too ethnic-looking to spur much interest among the local gentile women, and the religious difference (whether they consider me atheist or Jewish) wouldn't be acceptable to those who consider themselves religious Christians (most of them). Plus, most of the available local women within 10 years of my age are divorced with kids -- a non-starter for me. Even Jewish women aren't really an option. The Jewish population within 100 miles of where I live is tiny, and contains very few younger, unmarried Jewish women. Basically, if I want to get find a partner, I probably have to move, but if I move, it might take quite a while to find a job in my field. If I even find a job in my field, I could end up taking a big pay cut. It's not worth it.
These are just excuses...where there's a will there's a way. You are obviously not really interested in finding a wife at this point. Consider this carefully - money and career is important but family is even more important. No one on their death bed ever says "I wish I had spent more time in the office." It's proven that people with companionship live longer.
In the US, I dunno how unsustainable they are... in Poland the Jews had a population explosion from the 18th to the 20th century - they started as a small minority and ended up as 10% of the population because they outbred the locals. Their standard of living was low by modern yuppie standards, but it was enough to survive and breed. At some point the haredim in both the US and Israel will have to wean themselves from subsidies to some extent but this does not mean that they will stop breeding. Judaism is not incompatible with work - the idea of professional "rabbi" who does nothing but study is largely a modern invention - historically rabbis had other careers - Maimonides was a doctor, etc. Haredim are not overly concerned with material goods - they don't need a house in the suburbs with a 3 car garage. An apartment near their schul is good enough. They are not concerned with paying tuition at an Ivy for each child. So they won't reduce their childbearing to maintain standard of living.
K
K
Are you sure that the ultra-Orthodox would even be able to feed and house all of those children without subsidies? And without college degrees, what will they be able to do that brings in enough money to support themselves? The skilled trades would be an option, but who would agree to train them with allowance for their religious restrictions (prayer during the day, leaving early on Friday, no work on Saturday, etc.)?
I'm well into my thirties, K, and the pool of marriageable women around my age who don't come saddled with someone else's children is small and shrinking. If one has any standards for weight and appearance, the pool shrinks even further. I'd say that the situation doesn't look promising.
One other thought about the Jewish population explosion in Poland. How confident are we in the population estimates for the Jewish population at the beginning of that period? The documentary record for Jewish families is very spotty before the adoption of surnames, and Jews in many locales had reasons to keep a low profile because Jewish residency was viewed unfavorably by governments which restricted residency permits and and marriage licenses to keep the population the Jewish population numbers down. The only way that the Jewish communities could have resisted would have been to help the younger sons, poor people, etc. that the government didn't value to fly under the radar.
Because the immigrants who came over were poor and often illiterate (in European languages) and glad to leave their past behind, a lot of Jews are under the impression that no vital records were kept or that they were lost in the Holocaust. This is generally not true - European societies have had very centralized governments for quite a few centuries and they were into things like birth records and censuses. So I think the numbers are fairly firm and all indications are that there was a major population explosion, starting at around the time the potato was introduced - potatoes give you the most calories per acre of any northern crop and they immediately became a cheap and reliable food (except in Ireland).
K
Anonymous,
If you want to choose life, you will choose life-there are plenty of female Baalei Teshuvah looking to get married. If you want to choose extinction, you will choose that. Your current path sucks, it is one of self-hating loserdom. It can only get better, pay cut or not.
>ho would agree to train them with allowance for their religious restrictions (prayer during the day, leaving early on Friday, no work on Saturday, etc.)?
Look up Satmar, which doesn't take money from Israel. Or Kfar Chabad.
K,
Poland did not have a strong central government in the early 18th century, at which point the Jewish community was semi-autonomous and under the jurisdiction of the "Council of Four Lands" (until 1764). Efficient state-sponsored vital records there are largely a product of the Partitions at the end of the 18th century. That also coincides with Jews being forced to take surnames, primarily for record-keeping and taxation purposes. The Prussian, Austro-Hungarian and even Russian governments were more thorough in these matters than the previous Polish governments had been.
B,
Not even all married couples want kids. As for extinction, it's not like you're going to meet your great-great-great grandchildren. Effectively, death is extinction even if you have a hunch that your line will have continuity.
I'm not going to adopt Orthodoxy under any circumstances. It's a terrible fit for my outlook, interests and beliefs. As for the job, it took me almost a decade to prepare for it (think Ph.D. followed by postdocs, M.D. followed by residency, multiple actuarial exams, etc.). A pay cut would be the optimal situation if I gave up this job. More likely, I would be unemployed for a lengthy period of time. Even if the numerous foreigners here on visas were put out of competition, the natives would still saturate the field. C'est la vie.
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