Follow up to Jews Without Compassion

I took the long way around the shul before getting to my point in “Jews Without Compassion”.  I even warned a select few beforehand that there would be misdirection and some nifty sleight of hand. And yes, I had a lot of fun with it. Since there was a bunch of stuff that I cut out, and even more I thought of afterwards, I’m posting this follow-up.  But first, let me respond to some feedback.

One of my many myriads of readers, a platinum blonde bombshell, directed me to some evidence of King David’s historicity: the Tel Dan Stele and the Meshe Stele, although the latter example is less universally accepted. We here at Ahar-Ha.Am appreciate being kept on our toes.

And this from a woman of letters: it turns out that the bit about right-handed men with lots of older brothers being more likely to be gay is true. With so much nonsense floating around these days, I just wasn’t sure.  Also, chimeric intersex individuals really exist.  I can’t get over it. I’m not used to being right or even being paid attention to.

Keep it coming, ladies!

One gentleman, an English major, was sympathetic to my presentation, but given his academic background, just couldn’t get comfortable with “they” as singular. Well, methinks the English major doth protest too much, or at least doth remember Shakespeare too little. Picture Juliet emoting from the balcony: “O Romeo, Romeo, Wherefore art thou Romeo? Deny thy father and refuse thy name.” Or Hamlet to Ophelia: “Get thee to a nunnery.” “Thee”, “thou”, and “thy” used to be second person singular and familiar, while “you” and “yours” were reserved for plural and formal. Pronouns and grammar have changed over time. Whether or not “they” makes the transition as non-binaries prefer remains to be seen.

Another gentleman did a quick search on a smartphone and related that the Talmud unequivocally condemns homosexuality. He wasn’t playing gotcha but was interested in my response. I’m not especially swift on my feet and probably mumbled something unintelligible. I’m going to try again now, relying on my own academic background as a math major. This might get a little esoteric, so my myriads of readers should feel free to skip ahead if need be.

I am shamefully ignorant of Talmud, but I’m going to take another long trip around the shul and draw an analogy to geometry. Take a few axioms, postulates, definitions, put them all together, and soon you’ll have a slew of fancy lemmas and theorems. Don’t get me started on degenerate conic sections. There are, however, several types of geometry. The most familiar is Euclidean geometry, which is distinguished by the “Parallel Postulate”, stating that parallel lines never meet; neither do they diverge, holding one another at arm’s length. In one form of non-Euclidean geometry, it’s taken as axiomatic that parallel lines do indeed meet, or more accurately, converge.

So, which one is right? That’s the wrong question. Mathematics merely is. Rather, look to what a given system models. For example, if you want to do some architecture and build things, Euclidean geometry is what you want. But if you’re doodling on the surface of a sphere, Euclid won’t help you at all. Longitudes appear quite parallel at the equator, but they all come together at the north and south poles.

Here’s something else: we all live in a world where real numbers rule. Shave and a haircut, two bits. Four quarters to a dollar. Fifty states in the Union. Two’s company, three’s a crowd. And so forth.

But some folks, no doubt with too much time on their hands, came up with the concept of imaginary numbers, which, when combined with real numbers, turn into complex numbers. Look around and you’ll never find anything like the square root of negative one. Yet, these figments are quite useful in electrical engineering, quantum mechanics, as well as aerodynamics.

And then there’s the Fundamental Commandment of All Mathematics: “Thou shalt not divide by zero.” What happens if we fiddle with that? Maybe we shouldn’t go there – just look what happened to Ben Azzai and Ben Zoma.

Okay, that last bit is obscure, but that’s what the Google is for.

Talmud study can be delightfully mathematical. I love Rabbi Yishmael’s Thirteen Principles of Torah Exegesis. They send me right back to my misspent youth when I studied topology and abstract algebra. But what if we look deeper and try to identify the Fundamental Axiom of Talmud? A traditional answer would be something like “Every letter in the Torah is given by the Almighty, and anyone who doubts that has given up their share in the World To Come.” Given my interest in source criticism, that doesn’t work much for me. And as I’ve said in an earlier post, Talmud is not a house of cards that falls apart when the wind blows a bit too strongly. A Jew should not be like Linus waiting on the Great Pumpkin only missing his chance by the slightest expression of doubt.

But suppose we go with the traditional axiom. Is that enough to shun friends and family, or deny legal protections to absolute strangers? Sure, the Torah lists many examples of sins that lead to being cut off from Israel, but I’ve never viewed that as something we need to take any action on. Rather, someone who skips seders, misses megillah readings, and never steps foot in a shul cuts themselves off.

There were very many great minds among our sages, but they were just men, hence imperfect. And this is not a gender thing. As beautiful and brilliant as Beruriah must have been, I can only imagine that she must have fallen short at times. My vision of the Almighty is one of a loving and merciful parent. I just can’t accept anything that doesn’t square with that.

As Mordechai Kaplan put it, “The past has a vote, not a veto.” And I know the platinum blonde bombshell likes that one too.

And now I’d like to wander back to the chat I had with the learned scholar of my acquaintance. He (yes, big reveal, he!) was referring to the balance between strategy and morality in seeking change. It’s not at all easy to come up with the sweet spot, but that’s not what set me off. Rather, he asked whether it was wise in the recent election cycle for the Democrats to put so much emphasis on transgender issues. And this shows the impact gaslighting can have on even such a learned scholar as him. Yes, the Democrats are more sympathetic to sexual minorities, but it was the Republicans who spent a fortune on commercials spreading hate.

This pernicious use of wedge issues is nothing new. For years, we’ve heard the anti-choice movement bloviate about abortion on demand up to the moment of birth. I forget which clinic worker I heard this from, but women don’t come in demanding abortion but begging for it.

I’m sure if I tried hard enough, I could find an example of an abortion that I disapprove of. With even more effort, I might come up with a case that should be outlawed. But so what? The overwhelming majority of crisis pregnancies don’t fit into either of these categories.

And what of transgender women in competitive sports? I imagine that folks of goodwill could construct a rule that considered years since the onset of puberty, use of hormones and puberty blockers, and possibly a testosterone check. But the notion of some beefy guy declaring himself female to win a trophy? Doesn’t happen.

Pat Robertson said that he could have imagined himself as a teenager claiming to be a girl to gain access to the ladies’ showers. Sometimes I wish I had been that clever. Doesn’t happen.

And since I mentioned reproduction, let me relate some discussions I had with my wife, who is both way too good for me and doesn’t know what letter the word animus starts with. When we first discussed the awkward phrase “pregnant person”, she said something to the effect of “that’s ridiculous – if you’re pregnant, then you’re a woman.” Quite understandable. A week or so later, when she listened to the beta version of “Jews Without Compassion”, her take was subtly different. It was something like “just another thing men are taking away from women.” Which is awesome! Sounds like she’s validating the masculinity of transgender males. You go, girl!

Indeed, She Who Must Be Obeyed was a little slower to come around on marriage equality than I was. Couldn’t they just call it something else? But if memory serves, all it took to change her mind was sitting with a gay mom at one of our son’s t-ball games. Perhaps she’d have a similar epiphany if she ran into an actual pregnant person.

When I was in college, one of the more evolved fraternities opened the schoolyear with a ceremonial burning of a fag in effigy – freshman beware! The gay community, which was only beginning to organize, countered with Blue Jeans Day. Yup, everyone who was gay should wear blue jeans. That was neat. But there was something much sneakier – some friends had heard from other friends who heard from gay friends that some of the members of that fraternity were some of the horniest guys around. I don’t know if that was true or just a fun way to needle the homophobes, but I liked it just the same.

Most of the students I met at school were pretty accepting. In my freshman year, there was considerable commotion about New York City opening its police department to homosexuals. There was a talking head on TV who insisted that gays couldn’t be police because of the plain fact that they commit sodomy, and sodomy is illegal.  Can’t argue with that: sodomy is illegal since it’s bad, therefore it’s bad because it’s illegal.

One of my dormmates wasn’t comfortable with gay cops yet wanted to assure me of his progressive bonafides. They shouldn’t be cops because they could say “have sex with me or I’ll arrest you”, but that was the only reason to exclude them! I guess women don’t have any problems with being coerced into sex.

Another dormmate was not as conflicted. After all, if one of my kids turned out to be gay, wouldn’t it bother me for at least one second? Aha! Maybe it would – our biases can be well baked in. But what about it?

A different talking head was making the case against gay Scoutmasters. After all, it was just common sense. Which is total crap, but how is that any different from my rejection of long settled halacha because it just doesn’t sit well with me? It isn’t, but that’s just fine with me. The universe isn’t made up entirely of bright red lines. There are all sorts of shades of gray.

Maimonides was quite controversial in his day. He brought his vast knowledge of science and philosophy to his work in his theology. Ever so rationally, he tried to explain anything miraculous in some pedestrian and naturalistic way. I often wonder what conclusions he would draw about sexual minorities if he were alive today.

And I’m going to close with a complete non sequitur – it’s been 85 years since the sellout at Munich, but at least Chamberlain was naïve, and possibly cowardly, but not malevolent. Carthage must be destroyed.