The Self Hating Jew

This is a continuation of sorts of my very first blog entry: “What kind of Jew am I?”  I’m not sure if that post is a prerequisite for what follows.  But check it out.  I’m still hopeful it will go viral, or at least attract a troll or two.

I ended up by describing myself as possibly “heterodox or syncretistic”, and I suppose that’s true.  This means that I have a lot of disagreements with many Jews, which no doubt makes me a completely unremarkable Jew.  I imagine that many of our brethren would describe me as a self-hating Jew, but they would be in the minority.  No one has ever called me that to my face.

Nor should they!  I love myself so much that if I could, I would bend over and kiss the scar from my circumcision.

Before you get too comfortable with that startling image, let me tell you about a book I read a year ago: “Reckless Rites – Purim and the Legacy of Jewish Violence” by Elliott Horowitz, z’’l.  The title is a bit provocative, and that might be intentional.  It starts off with another startling image:  Jewish children in Hebron celebrating the Festival of Esther by pointing toy machine guns at their Arab neighbors.  You don’t have to be a peacenik to be disturbed by that.

Still, most of the book is not that different from many other Jewish histories I’ve read.  There were some interesting tidbits about how Vashti has been represented at different times, how the Purim story was reflected in midrash, and my favorite: Jews asking their gentile neighbors to light candles as a sign of mourning for Haman.

I did get disturbed at Chapter Seven: “Mild Men or Wild Men?  Historical Reflections on Jews and Violence”.  Horowitz was careful to disavow any notion of blood libels, poisoned wells, or nasty Shylocks. He did provide quite a list of Jews behaving badly towards Christians and Moslems, with a description of Jewish scholarship covering it all up.

Whose side was this guy on?  He’s giving aid and comfort to all those goyim calling us Christ-killers.  The antisemites don’t need his help.  And who was he to say anything at all?

I was a bit triggered, but I shouldn’t have been.  Is it surprising that our persecuted ancestors would act out a bit?  To be sure, there was no wholesale desecration of hosts or crucifixes, but there were some incidents.

And way back in kindergarten, didn’t I lecture my classmates about the total and utter nonexistence of Santa Claus?

But if you look at the Amazon reviews of this book, you will see several of our brethren label Horowitz – you guessed it – a self-hating Jew.  This precious epitaph, or maybe just some scalding criticism, seems to pop up whenever an unusual or discordant opinion is expressed in our circles.  It might just be simpler to think of the Chosen People as chock full of Jew-hating Jews.

I retired about a year ago, and it has been awesome.  I’m doing a great deal of reading, all to make up for a lifetime of not reading.  Unlike many of my scholarly friends, who get master’s degrees in midrash, or zealously stick with Daf Yomi, I’m not nearly so focused.  Frankly, I take an intensely scatterbrained approach to my studies.  Some obscure footnote might catch my eye, or maybe a tantalizing reference in a bibliography.  This all leaves me with a knowledge that is miles wide and inches deep.  One fun byproduct of this is that I can sound smart if I don’t talk too long.

I do tend to zero in on the many arguments, conflicts, and schisms that have taken place among Jews throughout our history.  This certainly leaves a lot to cover, and I’d like to share some thoughts on a few of these issues.  And rest assured:  at the end of this little talk, I will lay out in precise detail how we can heal all the divisions in Israel.  Really really!

For starters, we must realize that our differences are hard-wired in the Tanach itself.  I’ve heard several academics say that Devarim is pretty much a repudiation of everything that came before, although many rabbis who would disagree.  Whatever.  That’s way too much for me to wrap my pretty little head around.

Chronicles is a dry repetition of much of earlier scripture.  Many colorful details from Samuel and elsewhere are elided.  David’s drooling in front of the Philistines did not make the cut, and there is no mention of his diddling Bathsheba.  There seems to be an outright contradiction in Solomon’s story.  The Book of Kings records Solomon trading ten Israelite towns to Lebanon in return for some fancy cedar.  In Chronicles, Solomon captures ten towns from Lebanon.  Wiser minds might have nobler interpretations of all this, but it seems like a bit of a whitewash to me.  Or a Jew-wash if you will.

Take the Book of Ruth.  It starts off by dating itself to the time of the Judges, and that is reflected in many Christian orderings of the Old Testament.  Some modern scholarship, however, focuses on the language used and places Ruth in the early Second Temple period, possibly as a direct reaction to the Book of Ezra.

Why Ezra?  Because Ezra, like Chronicles, is very much focused on the legitimacy of the Davidic monarchy as well as the priestly line.  I imagine that the times called for some housecleaning.  Which meant, among other things:  get rid of your gentile wives and abandon any children they produced for you.

That’s a bit of a problem for me.  Like Moshe Rabbeinu, I took a Midianite wife.  I am convinced that she is my b’sherta.  We had our son ritually converted in a kosher mikvah, and he is as much of a Jew as I am.  Maybe more so.  Ten years ago, the Israeli rabbinate announced that it does not recognize conversions performed by the rabbi who officiated for us.  This makes my blood boil.

Perhaps some blood boiled twenty-five or so centuries ago. The beautiful story of Ruth describes a loyal, compassionate Moabite woman who had an unwavering commitment to her mother-in-law as well as to Israel: “Wherever you go, I will go; wherever you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your G-d will be my G-d. Where you die, I will die, and there I will be buried.”  And of course, King David’s lineage is traced to Ruth.

According to Ruth Rabbah, Rabbi Ze’era said: “The Scroll of Ruth tells us nothing of the laws of cleanness or uncleanness, of what is prohibited or what is permitted.  Why then was it written?  To teach you how great is the reward of those who do deeds of kindness.”  This certainly applies to my son’s mother as well as my son’s wife.

We Jews, who seem to hate one another so much, do a lot of fighting about time.  On some level, that makes perfect sense – it’s certainly important to know when we are.  Given the lunar calendar, it was necessary that two reliable witnesses had to spot the new moon, and this needed to be certified at the highest level of the sages.  The word would then be spread to the wider community through bonfires.  Of course, those pesky Samaritans would light their own fires, just to gum up the works.  I’m not sure I blame them considering how they were dissed upon the return of the exiles.

The Karaites started doing things a bit differently.   Since the festivals are so seasonal, they would go by what they saw around them:  the last frost, the first sprouting of grain, or something else of that sort.  I’m not sure how that’s all impacted by climate change.

The Book of Jubilees is not part of our canon, but it has Jewish, priestly roots.  It was preserved in Ethiopia, although fragments were found among the Dead Sea Scrolls.  There are a lot of interesting tidbits in Jubilees.  For example, Adam’s sacrifices were identical to those offered in the Temple.  Also, Passover was always commemorated in heaven, but was first observed on earth by Abraham right after the Binding of Isaac.  Who knew?  Well, Jubilees rejects the lunar calendar altogether.  There are precisely 364 days in the year:  twelve months of thirty days each, plus four additional monthless days.  No leap years at all, and no idea what the four monthless days are about.

And these temporal issues are still with us.  Daylight savings time can be rather controversial in Israel.  One side doesn’t want anyone tempted to violate the Sabbath due to late sunsets in the summer.  I imagine that the other side doesn’t want its commute screwed up.

We occasionally overcome these differences.  There’s a story in the Talmud in which Rabbi Yehoshua and Rabban Gamliel disputed the correct date for Yom Kippur.  Gamliel’s view prevailed, but Yehoshua didn’t accept the ruling.  Gamliel then ordered Yehoshua to come to him with his “stick and wallet on the day you consider to be Yom Kippur”, and Yehoshua complied.

When my Hebrew school teacher told this to the class, he seemed to think that Yehoshua was correct, and that he had seen through some nefarious Samaritan bonfire plot:  antiquity’s version of fake news.  But wasn’t it wonderful that Yehoshua obeyed his master?  Sure, but so much for speaking truth to power.

Some issues have easy fixes.  For example, why do we hang mezuzot at an angle?  Well, some folks thought it should be horizontal, and others wanted vertical.  In a practical compromise, we ended up with 45 degrees.

Occasionally, there is a question on how some word in the Torah should be vocalized.  This is not as trivial as it might sound as a misplaced vowel can change the meaning of the text. The recommended solution here is to read one pronunciation, pause, and then read the other pronunciation.  I haven’t done that myself, but it is on my bucket list.

Obviously, there are many issues which cannot be easily resolved.  The Talmud addresses whether a sleeping man can be counted as part of a minyan, and evidently the answer depends on when the man nodded off.  There is evidently no consensus on whether a boy studying to become a Bar Mitzvah can be included if he is wearing tefillin.  But a woman?  Fuhgeddaboudit.

A few years ago, I attended an egalitarian minyan which had at least one woman who lead prayer.  She used to deliver respectable dvar torahs.  Well, once one of the men looked around and announced that, gee whiz, there were ten men in attendance and that the minyan was kosher by anyone’s measure.  This infuriated the woman, who walked out.  She was followed shortly by her husband, who did not feel comfortable staying.  And with them, went the quorum.

Kashrut is a larger issue, which is also an area of intense self-hating disagreement.

Shortly after the Chassidic movement got off the ground, they declared that Mitnagedim knives were not sharp enough for slaughter.  From then on, Jews had to pick sides when selecting a butcher.

Something similar happened a few decades ago:  before the Rubashkin family opened its glatt kosher meat facility in Postville, the Lubavitch disapproved the Satmar hechsher.  This conveniently eliminated a large chunk of competition.

When I was still in high school, some Jewish lawyer went to court in England in an attempt to forbid kosher slaughtering practices.  Evidently, this was not over money – he just wanted all Jews to be vegetarian.

I used to pass through Penn Station on the way to work, frequently picking up a delicious bagel at Zaro’s.  As a condition of certification, they had to hang a sign saying that the Hebrew National products sold at the counter were not kosher.  But I thought they had to answer to a higher authority.

Closer to home, some Orthodox troll went into our beloved Deli King and was shocked that the cashier couldn’t tell him whether or not some of the cookies were pareve.  He should rest in peace, but I’m confident that Dick’s cookies were pareve.  The troll took a challenge to court, which was thrown out on constitutional grounds.

Certainly, Jews should be confident in the food they eat.  Nonetheless, I find much of this bewildering.

Before I go on, one quick note on Postville.  If you haven’t read Stephen Bloom’s book “Postville:  A Clash of Cultures in Heartland America”, pick up a copy and do so at once.  In the afterword of the updated addition, he describes being attacked for airing dirty laundry and attacking his brethren.  Goodness, another self-hating Jew.

I have always been a Zionist, and with Hashem’s help, I always will be.  Even here, we are second to none in our divisions:  political Zionists, cultural Zionists, religious Zionists, revisionist Zionists, and probably several other flavors as well.  Jews being Jews, we also have our anti-Zionists.  And not just ultra-Orthodox Jews who believe a reconstituted Jewish commonwealth should wait until Mashiach comes.

The Alliance Israelite Universelle was founded over thirty years before the First Zionist Congress and was never aligned with it.  They did incredible work for poor, uneducated Jews throughout the Diaspora, and I doubt that their contribution is widely understood today.

Even less well known is the American Council for Judaism.  This was a well-meaning group that split off from the Reform movement.  They were more in line with the Reform movement at its inception around the time of the Jewish emancipation in Europe.  I don’t fault their motives, but I do think they were a bit misguided.

With all this self-hating, it’s incredible that Israel exists today.

So, just how do we heal all our divisions?  Well, I might have overpromised a bit on that.  I don’t think it’s possible.  I’m sorry if anyone is disappointed, but no one believed me anyway.

There is one story from our sages that might help point the way.  It’s one of my favorites, and certainly the most useful.  If only one story from our history is true, I hope it’s this one.

The Talmud notes that when there were disputes between the school of Hillel and the school of Shammai, Hillel’s views usually prevailed.  Why was that?

Before debate even started, Hillel would attempt to state Shammai’s opinion.  Hillel wouldn’t even let Shammai speak until Shammai agreed that Hillel had characterized Shammai’s position correctly. 

Why was this so effective?  It ensured that Hillel understood Shammai. Hillel’s sincerity was plain for everyone to see.  Most importantly, it provided for an honest and accurate framing of this issue under discussion.

How does this compare to most of today’s discourse, both within Jewish circles and more universally?  Well, not so much.

There has always been sloganeering, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing.  It’s important to communicate ideas in a way that can be easily understood.  Still, many overheated sound bites we hear make for perfect bumper stickers, but they also distort.  Accommodation becomes less likely.  The author of “Mein Kampf”, may his name be erased, was fond of this method because it helped win over the uninformed masses.

A few years ago, I attended a very interesting course at a Chabad house – something about great conflicts in Jewish history.  It turned out that the correct outcome in all of these lined up perfectly with the Chassidic point of view.  I have no problem with that.  Chabad is very big on converting Jews to Judaism, and I can only praise them for that.  As the rabbi put it, they’re fighting fire with fire.

There was one bit that stuck with me.  Chabad likes great big public Chanukah lightings.  So do I!  One time there was opposition to holding one of these lightings in some municipal space on First Amendment grounds.  Some of those opposed were Jews.

Rebbe Schneerson, alav hashalom, said that these Jews did not want children learning Torah.

This is an example of a “straw man argument” – rather than addressing the opposing issue directly, invent something out of whole cloth and polemicize against that.

Deciding whether Chanukah lightings or Nativity scenes should be allowed on public land is a complicated issue.  I’ve come to accept that Santa Claus and Christmas trees are seasonal, not religious.  But we’re way past the slippery slope.  Recently, the Supreme Court was called to decide whether a Crucifix could be displayed in a national monument.  I remember Justice Scalia writing that the cross was just an indication of death, and he would be surprised if anyone took it as anything else.

Last month, one town somewhere out west opposed a commemoration of the winter solstice.  Can’t get much more seasonal than that.

Would it be alright if the Church of Satan of even the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster set something up at the local library?  That would be fine with me.  But when we get around to the KKK or neo-Nazis, I become considerably less comfortable.

I am all for the First Amendment, and I am all for children learning Torah.

These types of simplistic, reductive arguments might be enough when preaching to the choir, but they’re not likely to be persuasive to a wider audience.

When Hillel explained Shammai’s position, did he say, well, “Shammai hates G-d”, “Shammai hates America”, or maybe even “Shammai hates kittens”?  If he did, would Shammai feel that his opinion had been expressed correctly?

I don’t know – I wasn’t there.

Are there any questions?