“So it is that all of Torah and its wisdom is the ceaseless revelation of the hidden prayer of the soul.”
Jerusalem Moves a Bit Closer to Beijing
Yoram Evron notes in Y.Net:
“A renewed affair has been developing for the past three years between Israel and China. About 10 years after their relationship experienced a crisis following an American demand that Israel cut its security ties with China, Beijing has begun working to renew the close relations between the two countries.”
This should come as no surprise to anyone. When your natural ally appears to turn his back on you, you begin to search for less likely friends.
Consider this, though: Israel develops innovations but lacks the capability to industrialize and then commercialize them at scale. China is challenged in innovation but can bring someone else’s innovation to market and tweak it for special customer needs faster than anyone in the world. It will go from the Technion to a Tel Aviv startup to a Shanghai factory to your shelf – or to a Chinese airbase.
This is expedience rather than preference. The Chinese are historically the most fickle allies in the world with the possible exception of the Italians. The Israelis know that. But China is buying irrigation systems, water purification technology, commercial encryption technology, fruit, avionics, and tons of services from Israel, and paying cash, all for stuff the US doesn’t buy anyway. Plus, the more hooked Israel can get China on Israeli tech, the more it hopes to influence China on Iran and Mideast policy. It is Machiavellian, a tad desperate, and made absolutely necessary by the White House.
Israel has military technology the Chinese desperately need to upgrade the People’s Liberation Army. The only throttle on that flow has been the close ties between Israel and the US. Now? Hmm.
It is possible that Mr. Obama understands that in this regard his policies toward Israel – and Iran – constitute a significant own-goal. One can only hope that he understood this risk when he reached his hands out to the Mullahs in Iran.
Shoah and Understanding
The more you study the Holocaust, the less you understand. I spent a lifetime studying it, and I still cannot understand. There were string quartets playing in Auschwitz-Birkenau while a million and a quarter human beings were gassed, burned, and turned to ash. What happened in Auschwitz in the Holocaust was a terrible demonstration of the limits of civilization to civilize if we do not fear God and see His image in every human person.
via Rabbi Jonathan Sacks | February 13, 2015 | Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly | PBS.
Talmud and the Death Penalty
A recent study cited in Forbes documented problems in the application of the death penalty in the United States. The provocative study suggests that one out of every twenty-five defendants sentenced to death in the U.S. is actually innocent.
The study, while not necessarily conclusive, strengthens my growing conviction that if we are going to be a nation that continues to sentence people to death, we must consider using a more Talmudic level of criterion in our sentencing. I am a longtime advocate of the death penalty, but it is difficult to continue such support when the possibility of a mistake is so high.
Much of my support of the death penalty lies in its source in Torah rather than my belief in the punishment as a deterrent to criminals. Yet it is becoming clear that our standards for evidence and sentencing fall short of the intent of Jewish law. That should trouble every Jew in America who supports capital punishment.
I’m Jewish, and I want to convert to Judaism
My feelings about conversions are complex. As far as I am concerned, all conversions are valid. I figure R. Hillel would have stood with me on that, and I believe my relationship with Hashem is what makes me Jewish, not a beit din.
Nonetheless, for a range of reasons, mostly personal, I want to reach a stage where I am considered Jewish under Halachah. I consider that a journey of discovery rather than a quest for some kind of spiritual legitimacy.
The ACLU Does Defend Freedom of Religion
Apparently few of my friends, liberal or conservative, realize that the American Civil Liberties Union is not a political force bent on the secularization of society. In fact, while the ACLU has taken on a number of cases to ensure that religion is not forced on anyone who does not want it so, they have been staunch defenders of the individual’s right to religious expression, especially in public schools.
Proof positive is here.
It is heartening to note that the nation’s most famous Constitutional Law crusaders stand in defense of the Free Exercise Clause, whether they personally believe in it or not.
Yeah, My Religion is Bronze-Age. So What?
Atheists love to deride Abrahamic faiths as “Bronze-age religious,” a if the very oldness of a faith ipso facto discredits it.
Would you discredit reason because of its roots in ancient Greece? Or writing because cuneiform is SO not cool? Are our bodies disgusting and outmoded because their general shapes are over 70,000 years old? Was your father wrong about drinking and driving because he was older than you?
The attack is a logical fallacy, an ad homonym at best.
If you want to fence with me about my religion, en garde. But please show up with something better than “ooh, you’re old.” That’s drunken frat boy logic.
Anti-Semites on the Pampas
From the Washington Post‘s editorial page of April 23rd (“Argentina’s President Resorts to Anti-semitic Conspiracy Theories“):.
WHAT DO lobbyists at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and the director of a Washington think tank have to do with hedge-fund manager Paul Singer and the Argentine prosecutor Alberto Nisman, who diedmysteriously in January? Well, according to Argentine President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, they are all part of a “global modus operandi” that “generates international political operations of any type, shape and color.” They “ ‘contribute’ to financial attacks or simultaneous international media operations, or even worse, covert actions of various ‘services’ designed to destabilize governments.”
It is sad to hear the paranoid fantasies of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion echoed in the words of any public figure. It is more disturbing still when that figure is the leader of a nation of 43 million people. It is positively horrifying when that leader is responsible for the lives and well-being of 300,000 Jews.
But it should, perhaps, not be surprising. The Germano – Argentine community was very proud of its support for the Third Reich during World War II, and was an important factor in keeping Argentina neutral during that conflict. Colonel Juan Peron and his successors were arguably sympathetic with the aims and methods of National Socialism, and there was no shortage of Nazi refugees who found their way to Argentina during Peron’s rule. Indeed, Argentina was without equal in serving as a haven for unrepentant Nazis after the war, and not rocket scientists or former Luftwaffe pilots, but the blood-drenched scum who made up the core of the Gestapo, the SS, and the other organizations who carried out die Endlösung der Judenfrage. We cannot ignore that the Argentine president is a scion of this community.
I say this not to cast aspersion, but to raise a flag: as we all contemplate what must be done to save the Jews of Europe from the resurgence of anti-Semitic hatred, let us not forget the Jews of Argentina.
Ban the Snip, Ban the Tribe
In Europe’s Assault on Jewish Ritual Ben Cohen at Commentary leveled a double barreled j’accuse at the governments of Europe who are determined to outlaw circumcision and Kosher meat. His point, brilliantly argued, was a simple one: if you outlaw rituals that Jews are required to conduct as a core part of their observance, you are ipso facto outlawing Judaism itself, and making its practitioners criminals.
He does not stop there. He also takes on the apologists among our co-religionists who argue an equivalence between circumcision and female genital mutilation, or FGM.
To begin with, FGM has no religious basis, unlike male circumcision. Second, the removal of the clitoris entailed by FGM results in pain and medical complications that are infinitely worse than any of the outcomes of male circumcision; equally, it’s worth recalling that the benefits of male circumcision in fighting AIDS, as highlighted by the World Health Organization, are manifestly absent in the case of FGM. Third, the vast majority of men who undergo circumcision grow up unaware of the operation, whereas women subjected to FGM suffer hugely from the consequences for their entire lives.
Both his article and his response to a critical reader are worth a read.
Hebrew Hutong 