Jak Black's Gandhi Plan

The Border Police are gearing up for the Jerusalem gay parade, slated to take place next week. According to the media,

Police decided to expand the initial number of forces intended for the parade after receiving intelligence information regarding plans by ultra-Orthodox and extreme rightists to hold violent protests and attack parade participants.

Now, one can really trust neither the media in Israel nor the police, so it’s hard to know the precise nature of these “threats” against the parade, or even if they exist. But judging from comments I’ve heard personally on the Chareidi street, I’d be willing to assume that such threats exist. After all, this parade has nothing to do with homosexuality or “pride.” The last such parade was held in Rome, and the current one is being held in Jerusalem – if the parade in the past held a fig leaf of activism, that leaf is now rakishly askew. This parade is nothing but a blatant provocation against the religions of the world (next year in Mecca? somehow, I doubt it.) If Judaism is purposely being taunted in its most holy city, I cannot blame some for the desire to take action.

Nevertheless, I feel strongly that violence is the wrong way to go, questions of morality aside. In a word, violence plays directly into the hands of the protesters. Violence is precisely what they want. Cameras will zero in to signs demanding the death-penalty for homosexuals, violent scuffles with police will ensue, and the inevitable grotesquely fat Chassid, flecks of kugel in his beard, red in the face, screaming in broken English that these people are going to rot in hell will loop endlessly on the evening news. The participants, of course, will be portrayed as peace-loving citizens of the world – happy, well-adjusted, and “fabulous.”

Overall, a gigantic chillul Hashem.

That’s why I feel that the best move of the religious world (and here I go beyond the Chareidi world, because there are hundreds of thousands of deeply religious people in Israel who feel this is an injustice) would be to adopt Jak Black’s Gandhi Plan.

For those who have been hiding in a cave (or never saw the movie starring Ben Kingsley) Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869-1948) was

a major political and spiritual leader of the Indian independence movement. He was the pioneer of Satyagraha — resistance through mass civil disobedience strongly founded upon non-violence, becoming one of the strongest philosophies of freedom struggles worldwide.

Without going into the history of India, the cricical point is this – one of the most effective ways to fight against a stronger power in this modern world is not direct confrontation, but rather non-violent disobedience. If the State sends its might to attack the protesters or attempt to remove them by force, world opinion shifts quickly and heavily in favor of the protesters. And in this modern world, mass-opinion is everything. Opinion is why the Gay Parade begins with such an assumption of favor – they just want to march nicely to the Wailing Wall, no?

Imagine what would happen if dawn broke on the morning of the parade to a different scene than the police or the marchers expected. There are no violent protests. There are no placards demanding “death to the sickos!” Instead, there are two-hundred-thousand religious Jews of all stripes, sitting peacefully along the direct route of the parade, and barring entrance to the Old-City. Nothing will move them, even the inevitable blasts of police water-cannons. A few calm, rational spokesmen speak to the reporters, patiently explaining why the religious community feels this is a direct provocation. The day wears on, but the protesters refuge to budge. Just as the marchers have the “right” to march in Jerusalem, the protesters have the right to silently proclaim the ideology of their religion. The parade is forced to march elsewhere.

Overall, a gigantic kiddush Hashem.

(though unlikely to happen)

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The Rights of a Criminal

Despite protest from some quarters, Yigal Amir was recently granted the right to have conjugal visits during his incarceration (can you say “tacky headline?”). And although nothing about this mess pleases me, I think it's the right thing to do.

Yigal Amir, convicted assassin of prime minster Yitzhak Rabin and his wife Larissa Trimbobler spent eight hours together in the private room at Ayalon prison for conjugal meetings. The two met yesterday morning after the Shin Bet security service removed its objection to the visit based on concerns that Amir would take advantage of the situation to transmit messages to extremist elements outside the prison.

Now, let’s get one thing straight. The idea of conjugal visits utterly sickens me. These are criminals we’re talking about. They committed crimes against humanity and the State, and they are serving time in prison as a punishment. They do not deserve many of the privileges they receive. They should not be granted conjugal rights. They should not have internet access (unless they can only access my pompous and longwinded posts – punishment enough :) ) Certainly they should not be allowed loose for weddings, Bar Mitzvahs, and weekend furloughs.

It is true that criminals are still human. They deserve to be treated with dignity, despite their incarceration. They should not be punished in a cruel or unusual manner. But when I think of the terms “cruel and unusual,” I imagine that the one who wrote the law had the rack and the thumbscrew in mind rather than a deprivation of Frisbees (as one criminal sued for.)

So the truth is, I don’t believe than any criminal should be granted conjugal rights. Part of the fundamental punishment of prison is just that – being removed from the circle of friends and family. But if we’re going to give that right to any prisoner not deemed a security risk, then Yigal Amir deserves the right too. It is true that he committed a terrible crime. He is a murderer. If Israel had a death penalty, he probably would have gotten it. But because he didn’t, he is serving his time, paying his debt to society. He does not deserve any worse treatment than any other murderer serving his time, regardless of who he murdered.

What is truly shocking is the demand from the left that he be treated different. I wonder – had Amir murdered a Right-wing Prime Minister, do you think they would still make the same point? Somehow, I doubt it. If we're going to be liberal, let's at least be consistent.

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How to Review a Book

In "And From Jerusalem His Word"(Pages 203-204), there is a quote from Rav Shlomo Zalman Auerbach, Zt'l :

I prefer to concede on almost anything to avoid a machlokes. When I read any sort of criticism, I always look to see if the writer first praises the work and its author and then comments on or criticizes a specific aspect or detail. If he does, I know that the criticism is genuine and therefore permissible. But if the piece opens with criticism and attacks the author or his book, then it is sheer machlokes and thus forbidden. Only when a person knows the value and importance of his fellow man can he criticize him without descending into controversy.

Last week, when I referred to the above elsewhere on the internet, someone mentioned that this was said in reference to Rav Avroham Yitzchak Kook Zt'l. However, while Rav Shlomo Zalman was extremely careful about Rav Kook's honor, as is well known, the above quote was a general one and does not appear to be related to this topic.

I think that the above-mentioned thoughts of Rav Shlomo Zalman on criticizing was related to being dan lechaf zecus(judging favorably), which involves seeing and evaluating the entire person or situation:

From the Other Side of the Story, as quoted here:

...A virtuous man was walking with his students and they chanced upon the dead carcass of an animal. The students said, "What a foul odor is coming from this carcass!" the virtuous man said, "How white are its teeth!" (Chovos HaLevavos, Shaar Hacniya, chap 6)

Which was true? Which was more obvious?

Both observations were true. Even though the white teeth were much less obvious and easy to overlook in the face of the offensive, overpowering odor of a dead carcass, the virtuous man found something nice to see and to say. He chose to concentrate on the positive. If this can be said concerning a dead animal, how much more so should we try to find the good in a human being.

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The Ends of Conservative Politics?

I’ve been thinking about an interesting question lately, and I wondered if anyone had any input.

Frank Meyer, an early editor and columnist at the National Review, is widely considered to be one of the founding fathers of the modern conservative movement. He was most famous perhaps for his attempts to forge a synthesis between the libertarian and social conservative strands of the movement, popularly known as “fusionism,” though Meyer disliked the term himself.

Seemingly, the two threads of thought are irreconcilable. Libertarianism (sometimes known as “classical liberalism”) places primacy on the individual, and individual freedom. According to libertarians, the force most likely to restrain the freedom of a people is government. Therefore, all forms of government should be minimized to the extent possible. Man himself, once completely free, will have the free will to live as he wishes, and will have the ability to live a just and orderly life.

Conservatives buy little of the libertarian argument, often scornfully referring to libertarians as “intellectual anarchists.” Although conservatives believe in limiting the government, they also realize that the government does play an important role in society, primarily that of keeping order and executing justice. Conservatives believe that if libertarians would have their way, the world would fall into anarchy, not order. Instead, they placed primacy on order and especially community.

The development of the conservative movement was marred by frequent, and occasionally vicious, squabbling between these two factions. But Frank Meyer claimed that in truth, there was no inherent argument. He believed that both factions were incorrectly stressing only one half of the true conservative equation. He claimed that libertarians, on the one hand, often placed the focus on liberty and freedom alone, forgetting that the end of society is not freedom but virtue. And a free capitalist economic order cannot inculcate virtue. Rather, they must learn to draw from the well of transcendent and absolute order of truth.

And here’s where it gets interesting. Meyer claimed that social conservatives were misguided too. For while they accepted “the objective existence of values based upon the unchanging constitution of being,” they denied what must follow – that “acceptance of the moral authority derived from transcendent criteria of truth and good must be voluntary if it is to have meaning; if it is coerced by human force, it is meaningless.” Meaning, in order for man to be truly virtuous, he must have the ability to choose virtue. And if a state attempts to coerce virtue, man will lose his freewill, and once freewill is gone, he cannot be considered truly virtuous. So at the political level, freedom must be the primary end.

It’s an interesting idea, but it seems flawed, and Brent Bozell, brother-in-law to the founder of National Review, William F. Buckley, pointed this out in a lengthy article titled “Freedom or Virtue?” He claimed that the first and primary goal of mankind is virtue, not freedom. Therefore, insisted Bozell, the primary purpose of politics must be to aid this quest for virtue, even by means of the state. What about Meyer’s point that if the state attempts to coerce virtue, man will not really be allowed to exercise his freewill? Bozell answered that freewill was inherent in man – especially in his inner impulses and desires, and it was these that truly determined what kind of an act was being preformed. A man in chains, forced to sin, would not be condemned by G-d, but virtuous acts, commanded by the state, produced order and stability, and promoted a godly civilization. “Freewill would exist no matter what policies the state adopted, so why not pass laws that would prudently regulate man’s action, to prevent sin and lawlessness from taking over the world?” Did not society already do this in the form of certain laws?

Now, on the surface, Bozell has an exceedingly strong point. This is basically the vision the Torah lays out for a just Jewish state. One can hardly claim that man’s freewill has been taken away, despite the mandates of a moral state. But Meyer replied in a subsequent article, and although many of his points seem weak, he does have one very strong one, the core of my quandary. Meyer explained that allowing the state to promote virtue could only lead to disaster. Power corrupts, and “if the state is endowed with the power to enforce virtue, the men who hold that power will enforce their own concepts as virtuous. The denial of this basic freedom leads not conservatism but to authoritarianism and theocracy.”

Meyer has a good point. The gentiles have no urrim v’tummim to objectively decide what is considered moral. Just look at what the present oligarchy considers “moral” – inverse-racism, multiculturalism, feminism and all matter of other corruption. If the state can coerce virtue, who is to say what they will mandate in the future?

Is Meyer or Bozell correct? Should a conservative state seek to mandate virtue? This is no idle question, as many laws already do just this – for example, taxes that are “pro-family.” I have some thoughts, but I’m curious to know what everyone thinks. Keep in mind that we’re not discussing a Jewish state; the gentiles are not necessarily obligated to even pattern their state after the Torah (though they are obligated to keep law and order.)

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To Relinquish Freedom

I saw an interesting, if a bit unsettling, news item yesterday. Apparently, an elementary school south of Boston has joined a growing list of schools that has banned the games “tag” and touch-football from its schoolyard. Officials claim that the school fears kids will be hurt and hold the school liable.

Recess is "a time when accidents can happen," said Willett Elementary School Principal Gaylene Heppe, who approved the ban. While there is no districtwide ban on contact sports during recess, local rules have been cropping up. Several school administrators around Attleboro, a city of about 45,000 residents, took aim at dodgeball a few years ago, saying it was exclusionary and dangerous.
Elementary schools in Cheyenne, Wyo., and Spokane, Wash., also recently banned tag during recess. A suburban Charleston, S.C., school outlawed all unsupervised contact sports.

Of course, some will claim that the primary issue is the need for tort reform. If a person can sue an institution for injury during an innocuous child’s game, and in all likelihood walk away with a reward of hundreds of thousands of dollars, then something is clearly broken. And no doubt there’s some truth to this - as the conservative truism runs, subsidize any behavior and you’ll get more of it, tax any behavior and you’ll get less. The great potential rewards for even frivolous litigation are a very strong incentive, and society is simply (over)reacting to protect itself.

But I think there’s much more to it than that. Take a look at this priceless quote from one of the parents at the school:

Another Willett parent, Celeste D'Elia, said her son feels safer because of the rule. "I've witnessed enough near collisions," she said.

Two of the most famous dystopian works of literature in recent history are Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell, published in 1948, and Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, published in 1932. Both saw a depressing vision of a future with stifled thought and creativity – a world where humanity has completely lost its most basic freedoms. Both were written as cautionary tales against totalitarianism and communism (which tends to lead to totalitarianism.) However, there is a key difference between the two works.

In Nineteen Eighty-Four, Orwell assumes that the only mechanism capable of depriving a society of freedom is force. In Winston Smith’s totalitarian world, members of the “Party” are monitored carefully and constantly through an elaborate system of cameras and spies for any sign of “criminal behavior.” The Thought Police punishes any infraction swiftly and brutally. As everyone knows, the tale does not end happily – Smith is ultimately caught and tortured, and his desire for a personal humanity crushed.

Huxley, on the other hand, saw a radically different future – therapeutic totalitarianism, if you will. In the Brave New World, there is no need for a thought police or prying cameras. The population itself has been engineered to forgo its freedoms for the sake of an infantile, simplistic existence. They are conformist and happy, the ultimate consumers – indoctrinated into an existence of production and consumption. They are promiscuous from a young age, and are taught to never be alone (something that might lead to thought.) When not at work, they watch “feelies” (thoughtless movies) and play childish games akin to miniature golf. Humans are raised in test tubes and never know or experience anything that might cause feeling or emotion, such as family relationships. And any feelings that do arise are quickly self-quashed with a narcotic drug “soma.” In one scene, the main character almost causes a riot, yet when the police arrive they do subdue the population with drugs and hypnotic music rather than brute force.

In his book Amusing Ourselves to Death, critic Neil Postman writes,

What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism...Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisisted, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny “failed to take into account man’s almost infinite appetite for distractions.”

What Huxley saw clearly is that the greatest threat to liberty and freedom is not necessarily an external force. There comes a time in the lifespan of a materialistic society that the people are willing to trade their basic freedoms for an infantile existence of thoughtless getting and spending.

Freedom and responsibility go hand in hand. Children are given relatively little freedom because if they are allowed complete freedom, they would exercise it in an irresponsible manner. Only a truly responsible and moral person can exercise and guard real freedom. And it is clear that a person (or a society) cannot handle freedoms unless his innate character is really fit to handle them. For liberty does not arise by of chance, the gift a benevolent government, but is an outgrowth of a free and moral character. The writer Kenneth Minogue tells us that if we are seeking the conditions of freedom,

“we must look not to those circumstances which happen to accompany it, but to the manner in which it has been attained. And we will find that it has always been attained because of a spontaneous growth of interest in truth, science, or inventiveness; a spontaneous growth of moral principles appropriate to freedom; a spontaneous construction of the political arrangements which permit of free constitutional government. Spontaneity indicates that free behavior has arisen directly out of the character of the people concerned.”

If a people has a character that is conducive to liberty, they will attain freedom. But if they lose that character, they will end up losing their freedom. And liberty is hard work. It must be guarded with strength of will, and sometimes arms. The Constitution did not make the American people free. The pioneers lived in America for almost two hundred years before the Constitution was written. The Constitution was a political expression of the innate character of a free and willful people.

If we view freedom in this manner, it is pretty clear that American society is rapidly degenerating into servitude. The character of freedom and individuality that typified the earlier builders of the nation has all but disappeared. As long as I have a self-parking Lexus, a summer home in Aruba and a preordered PS3, I’ll leave the rest to others.

This is Huxley’s point. A society only concerned with spending and getting will eventually tire itself out. It will lose its well of fortitude and strength. And it will gladly acquiesce to a loss of freedom in return for an infantile existence of carefree materialism and decadence. This explains why the characters in Huxley’s book are named both after communist figures and capitalist ones, and sometimes strange combinations of the two. His point is that capitalism and communism are really two sides of the same coin – they both focus solely on production and consumption as a way of life. Many conservative writers made the same point on the fall of the Soviet Union: materialism had merely defeated materialism. There was, essentially, no great “ideological victory.”

Any careful observer of American society will see that there has been a rampant loss of freedom in recent decades. Virtually every aspect of life is carefully regulated – the examples are legion. This regulation of a simple child’s sport – one played throughout American history – is merely another sign of the cancerous degradation of American society. As Chilton Williamson puts it so well, “four decades after [Huxley’s] death, we can see the horror actually upon us in the form of the calculated proletarianization of the Western publics by a collaborative effort between big government, big business, and the entertainment industry to infantilize the populace in the interests of creating a docile and obedient citizenry, a captive, suggestible consumer market, and a passively receptive mass audience.”

Samuel Francis writes,

Today, virtually everyone in the United States is habituated to a style of living that is wrapped up in dependency on mass organizations of one kind or another – supermarkets, hospitals, insurance companies, the bureaucratized police, local government, the mass media, the factories and office buildings where we work, the apartment complexes and suburban communities where we live, and the massive, remote and mysterious national state that supervises almost every detail of our lives. Most Americans cannot even imagine life without such dependencies and would not want to live without them if they could imagine it. The classical republicans were right. Having become dependent on others for our livelihoods, our protection, our entertainment, and even our thoughts and tastes, we are corrupted. We neither want a republic nor could we keep it if we had one. We do not deserve to have one, and like the barbarians conquered and enslaved by the Greeks and Romans, we are suited only for servitude.

Today, Celeste D’Elia will gladly trade the freedom of her child for an infantile sense of safety. What will she trade tomorrow?

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EVEN EVERY HIDDEN THING -- On Chickens, Scandals and Mussar Haskels

כִּי, אֶת-כָּל-מַעֲשֶׂה, הָאֱלֹהִים יָבִא בְמִשְׁפָּט, עַל כָּל-נֶעְלָם, אִם-טוֹב, וְאִם-רָע
(קֹהֶלֶת 12:14)

For every action, the Lord will bring to Judgment, even every hidden thing, whether good or bad. (Eccl. 12:14)

So much has been written in the last few weeks about the Monsey Chicken Scandal (including a rather heated exchange I had with one of the ba’alim of another blog – but enough said about that) yet, amazingly, no one has written about one issue, which IMVVHO, is the biggest issue in the whole story – and has caused the most Chillul Hashem.

The story is real simple. An outwardly pious and learned Jew, a well–respected part of a community which itself is respected for its high level of learning and piety. The man is considered a cut above the rest – gives shiurim, leins, not to mention tsedakah, etc.

The man turns out to have been selling treif chickens in his butcher store and to local caterers for some time, lying to them about its kashrus. Not cutting corners. Treif. As in Frank Perdue. We’re talking deoraysas here, honey.

When he is found out, a scandal erupts, and, we are told, the man has to divorce his wife and flee the country out of shame.

Much hand wringing follows. Some talk about upgrading standards of kashrus. Some pilpul about the laws of ne'emanus -- or whether timtum ha lev applies here. Some talk about emphasizing the importance of honesty in business – correctly pointing out that the breach here was as much a gross violation of Choshen Mishpat as of Yoreh Deah.

Anything sound out of whack here? Is the proverbial elephant in the room being ignored? Why?

Before I identify the elephant, think about this. Imagine if you had met this man several weeks before he was found out. You tell him a hypothetical story about a frum Jew on the other side of the world who seems frum, but in fact is selling treif meat to a whole frum community. What do you think he would have said? Of course, he would say, that man is a rasha merusha, a pious fraud, and will burn in Gehennom. I mean it’s plain and simple, everyone can understand it. What was done was wrong, wrong, wrong, no two ways about.

So, how could he do it?

“The students of R. Yochanan b. Zacai asked him: why was the Torah more
strict with a ganav than a gazlan? He said to them, this one treated
equally the honor of the servant to his Master, and this one did not treat
equally the honor of the servant to his Master. So to speak, he [the
ganav] made the lower eye as though it does not see and the lower eye as though
it does not hear [a euphemism for he acted as though God did not see or hear his
actions].” Bava Kama 79b.

It’s real simple: no one was looking. And what about the One Above? He, in that man’s mind, kevayakhol was not looking either. It’s that simple. That’s the problem in a nutshell.

To my mind, this is the real Chillul Hashem. Everyone understands that what was done was terribly, terribly wrong – heck, even someone with no knowledge of the Torah can understand that committing massive consumer fraud is wrong. The real question is how could someone so steeped in the minutiae of Torah – who said krias Sh’ma twice a day, who davened three times a day, who learned, kept mitsvos, etc., etc. – how could someone like that fall into the mental trap of the ganav, the psychological trap called, “No one – including No One -- Is Looking”? Someone who wants to be mekanter can easily say -- well you know what he can say, Chazal already said it.

In my mind, this is a part of chinuch that is sorely neglected – the feeling that everything you do is watched and recorded, and one day you will give an accounting as per the opening Ecclesiastical possuk.

The Mishna (Avos 2:1) quotes Rebbe as saying: “Look at three things and you will not come to sin, Know that which is above you, an Eye that sees, and Ear that hears, and all you deeds are written in the Book.”

The Chofetz Chaim is quoted as saying that the reason that the chochmah of making movies came down to the world is because people could not fully grasp the import of this Mishna. A movie helps us visualize that our actions and words can be recorded an played later – after 120 years we will watch our life’s “movie” and be judged accordingly.

Now, since the Chofetz Chaim, technology has advanced by leaps and bounds. In his days, you had to head a movie studio to be able to film a movie. Today, for a few hundred dollars, every Chayim Yankel can own a video-recorder, on which he can record the most mundane parts of his and his family’s life. (“How cute! You taped your childrens’ twelfth trip to the local museum.”)

Perhaps the need perceived by the Chofetz Chaim is even greater in our generation. We need to think about that video recorder in the sky. One day, after 120 years, we are going to see a record made by the Video Recorder Above. Will we be proud or shamed by our performance?

Other than such mesholim, I don’t know how to inculcate this lesson. True, the issue is not new. R. Yochanan ben Zaccai, as he was about to depart this world, blessed his students, “May the fear of Heaven be upon you as the fear of flesh and blood.” His students said, “Only that much?” He answered, “Halevai (may it be so).” (Berachos 28b). That was said about tannaim, whose level of piety we cannot even imagine.

So that’s all I can say. “May the fear of Heaven be upon [us] as the fear of flesh and blood.” Halevai.

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