Time for Action – Kosher Meat and Kosher Behaviour
1. There is a lovely family kosher butcher’s shop on Brent Street called Nissim. They are fine upstanding people, who serve good quality food at reasonable prices, and whose behaviour is as kosher as the meat that they serve.
2. And they are likely to be put out of business any month now.
3. A chain of kosher butchers who already have branches in Golders Green and elsewhere are about to open up a new shop within a few yards of Nissims. They have economy of scale advantages, and will doubtless dent or destroy the Nissim’s business.
4. The Rabbis should prevent this, and could. The Biblical precept of not disturbing your neighbours’ boundaries is given extensive ramifications in Jewish business ethics, and no Beth Din ought to grant a licence to a shop that is about to destroy someone else’s business, unless it is clearly shown that the existing business is exploiting its monopoly.
5. But the Rabbis won’t act. Years ago a Rabbinic representative of the London Beth Din told me that they do not consider it practicable to apply or enforce the din of hasogas gvul (your neighbour’s borders), primarily because they are not the only Beth Din in London. So people can always get licensed somewhere else.
6. If the Rabbis are in disarray and unable to give practical expression to the values of the Torah, we must take matters into our own hands. Let us see a customer boycott of any shop opening within a few yards of an existing business, and let’s all shop at Nissims harder than ever.
Tefilin – Ignorance and Arrogance
1. The boy who caused a security alert by wearing tefilin on an aeroplane clearly had no common sense. Worse than that, he was reflecting a prevalent communal attitude that for non-Jews not to know instinctively all about us is culpable ignorance on their part, an attitude which of course in reality merely reveals monstrous arrogance on our part.
2. I have always wondered why Rashi finds it necessary, when the word “totafot” is used in the Chumash to describe tefilin (Shemos 13:16), to quote a Talmudic opinion that it is a compound word formed from two foreign words including an African one. Why is this thought worth telling us? (One might even wonder why the Rabbis thought able to attribute a word of Loshon Hakodesh to a compound of two pre-existing foreign words; something for another time.)
3. As the Rambam discusses in Moreh Nevuchim, many of our mitzvos have their counterpart in other religions, while some are exclusive to Judaism. And it is important to know which is which: apart from anything else, knowing whether one of our strange rituals is in fact sufficiently common to other religions to be likely to be recognised and understood by others can help to avoid misunderstandings, not to mention security alerts. So perhaps Rashi wants us to know that this particular ritual had a rough equivalent in at least two other cultures of the time. Nowadays, of course, there is no equivalent of tefilin in any of the religions of which most of us have heard (although it would not surprise me to learn that there is an equivalent in some religion somewhere).
4. There is good Biblical precedent for the idea that we should go out of our way to ensure that our religious practices and ideas will be understood by others in their own terms. When Moshe Rabbeinu describes our history to the King of Edom (Bmidbar 20:15) he says that Hashem sent an angel to bring us out of Mitzrayim. We spend half of seder night each year saying that Hashem took us out personally and not by angel – so why does Moshe change the story? Again, perhaps because the King of Edom could reasonably be expected to understand and accept the notion of an angel intervening, that being within the sphere of his own religous ideas, but would not be able to understand the notion of a single, infinite God.
5. Common sense is always useful, and never common. It behoves us to remember that we are a tiny minority of the people of the world, and that we should have the humility to remember that if we want our strange practices to be tolerated and even appreciated we should be prepared to take a few moments to explain them in terms that other people can understand and accept.
Haiti – Giving tzedokoh funds to disaster relief
1. Amidst the appalling disaster and devastation of the Haiti earthquake, it is at least good to know that the reaction of so many people around the world has been “what can we do to help?”.
2. And it is also good to know that the Jewish community is not backward in coming forward. Israel had its team of medics standing by ready to join the relief efforts within hours of the news hitting the media. And Jews around the world are joining others in contributing funds to the relief campaigns.
3. The issue of using tzedokoh funds for humanitarian disaster relief is really rather simple, but I discuss it here because I have received reports of at least one person who should know better – being responsible for children’s spiritual development – talking nonsense.
4. There are two main talmudic principles involved.
5. First, the allocation of limited resources is that “the poor of your city come before the poor of other places”. That applies at all levels, so my family come first, my local community comes next, and so on outwards.
6. The rabbis record that we give to non-Jewish charities as well as to Jewish charities because of “darchei sholom” – the ways of peace – and there is considerable discussion as to what precisely this means.
7. Commonsense makes it clear that the first principle does not and could not mean “do not give a penny to another city until your city has everything it could possibly wish for”, because on that basis nobody would ever get beyond their own immediate family in giving tzedokoh. What it does mean is that in deciding how to divide whatever I am giving to charitable purposes overall, I give relatively more to those for whom I am more responsible by virtue of proximity and expectation, and less to those for whom I am less responsible.
8. As to the second principle, what is required by darchei sholom has changed in the last few decades in a number of ways. When we lived in small isolated villages in Poland, our responsibilities were limited by our knowledge. Famines in Africa were thought of, if at all, as remote events affecting people of whom we knew little or nothing. Nowadays, almost every Jew in this country sees the world news in a newspaper of some kind or on the television or hears it on the radio. Almost every Jew will at some point last week have seen the faces of people wounded by the earthquake, and most will have heard their cries.
9. Whether one sees the principle of darchei sholom as being primarily about our community’s international reputation or about our own self-respect and spiritual direction, it is simply impossible that the descendants of our father Abraham could see the faces of the injured and hear the cries of the suffering and not be moved to wish – almost to need – to be associated in some small way in the efforts to relieve their suffering.
10. And we can rest assured that when we give money to the disaster relief funds we are following the example of sensitivity set by the gedolei Torah over the years – the “Tzaddik in Our Time” Reb Aryeh Levine, for example, gave money to African famine relief: although immersed in the Old City with very limited opportunity for finding out about events in the wider world, the cries of the famine-stricken somehow found their way to his ears with the inevitable result.
11. Put another way, the application of the principles of “your city first” and “darchei sholom” has been affected by the shrinking of the world: my brother in Africa is no longer a remote concept, it is an actual face that I have seen. Individuals will make their own decisions about the allocation of their own resources. Some may prefer not to give their basic ma’aser tithes to humanitarian disasters of this kind, but to add to their ma’aser money for this purpose. Whatever each person’s individual decision, we can feel closest to our father Abraham at moments like this when we are following his lead in serving God by caring for mankind.
All Proceeds to Charity – Promise or Prayer?
1. Nowadays it is common to see the words “all proceeds to charity” or something along those lines on all kinds of advertisements, from books to concerts.
2. There are, however, a few potential ambiguities with this formula, based on the uncertainty of what is meant by “all”, what is meant by “proceeds”, what is meant by “to” and what is meant by “charity”.
3. Proceeds is generally understood in this context to mean profits, and fair enough: although in some cases the actual cost of producing whatever it is has been generously underwritten by a charitable donor, in which case the gross receipts from “customers” may go to charity, in most cases it is accepted that proceeds means proceeds net of actual expenses.
4. But what amounts to actual expenses in this context varies widely. In particular, where the person who is offering the service is paying himself or herself a salary out of the charity’s funds, “expenses” is likely to include a deduction that goes into the pocket of that person and possibly other employees of the charity.
5. Again, fair enough, one may say: people who run charities also like to eat occasionally; and where a charity requires more time and expertise than can be provided by a part-time amateur, the charity will of course need to factor into its running expenses the costs of salaries for its staff.
6. But in order to avoid halachic questions of theft from public funds and g’neivas da’as (“stealing the mind” – creating a false impression) three things are needed – transparency, accountability and proportionality.
7. As to transparency, it should be clear to donors that they are contributing towards the living expenses of the person or persons running the charity. Sometimes this will be sufficiently clear by implication: but not always – and if there is reasonable ambiguity, it should be dispelled in some appropriately express way. And if the person collecting for charity is on a commission, the amount of that commission should be made clear to the donor at the time of soliciting the donation.
8. As to accountability, charities should not just produce the accounts required by the Charity Commission: they should produce and publish their complete accounts so that people who donate even small amounts are likely to have access to the accounts. For example, if a charity has a standing advertisement in a synagogue, the annual accounts should be sent to the synagogue and it should be invited to exhibit them in the same way.
9. As to proportionality, salaries should be proportionate both to the resources of the charity and to the qualifications of the person providing the services. One sometimes suspects that people pay themselves or are paid out of charitable funds salaries at a rate that they would find it hard to command in the commercial sector.
10. Those who run charities without charging for their time, or who give all their time to charities and charge a reasonable amount for it, do an immense service both to those whom the charity benefits and to all of us who they allow to participate in it through donations. But by agreeing to run a charity one accepts a sacred trust that must not be tainted by hidden or unreasonable personal gain.
Why aren’t poppies more popular?
1. Sensitivity is the key Jewish value. This week’s Torah reading finds Abraham – who discovered Judaism – exploring with God how to maximise the opportunities for even the most wicked and greedy of all cultures, the connurbation of Sodom and Gemorrah, to escape total destruction. And it finds him building a religious philosophy based on the concept of welcoming guests and visitors from all corners of the cultural globe, and ministering to the needs of each with a unique sensitivity.
2. So presumably the orthodox Jewish community will be alert for ways of feeling and showing sensitivity to others. Sensitivity to the feelings of those who fought, or whose families fought, to preserve a malchus shel chesed – a free and democratic society – where every religion and culture could receive respect and could cherish its own culture and values alongside those of its host society? Sensitivity to the grief of those who every year mourn those who lost their lives in the battle for this country’s freedom. And sensitivity to the desire of a free nation to mark its feelings of the senselessness and wickedness of the lust and ambition that soaked the fields of Europe twice in the blood of those whose lives should have been dedicated to something better; the blood-soaked fields of the World War One trenches, whose blood-red poppies were gathered as the guns fell silent in spontaneous tribute to those who fell.
3. The ranks of the orthodox community should be ablaze with poppies between now and Remembrance Day. It is a rare opportunity to share a cultural and non-religious symbol with all those who live around us, men and women of all religions or of no religion. There are still a few days left to buy our poppies and show Abraham’s sensitivity to those around us – let’s get buying.
Rabbis Gone Wrong – Tisha B’Av 2009
1. Let’s prepare for the worst – that not every one of the rabbis arrested by the FBI yesterday turns out to be a maligned innocent, but that rabbis turn out to have knowingly been involved in money laundering.
2. If that is the case, then here is this year’s Kamtza and Bar Kamtza challenge for the rabbinical world and the whole Jewish community, just in time for this year’s Tisha B’av.
3. If I call myself a Jew and I behave badly, God’s name is besmirched. If I call myself a rabbi and behave badly, the Torah is discredited: thousands of neshomohs may be turned away from Jewish values and practice because the Judaism that a “rabbi” represents appears spiritually bankrupt.
4. One of the many faults of this generation’s Jewish community is that we have allowed people too easily to assume the title Rabbi. On the one hand, semichah has become a kind of routine examination whereby people can obtain official ordination after just a few years’ study and without any serious kind of estimation of their moral character or leadership qualities. On the other hand, even without semichah of any formal kind people are allowed to assume the title, or are accorded it as an honorific, without any serious justification or need. (The Chazon Ish did not have semichah, because he never needed it.)
5. To reverse this process would be enormously difficult. But not impossible, if the will from the rabbis and the people were there. The essence of the Kamtza and Bar Kamtzah story is that the rabbis sat and did nothing. The rabbis, with our encouragement and support, need to restore the lustre to their holy office. They need publicly to expel those who degrade it, by public proclamations of who is no longer fitting to act in reliance on a semichah; and they need to take serious steps to ensure that woldwide the title is reserved for those who have shown more than a few years attendance at a talmudic sausage factory to deserve it.
Sense and Sensibility – The Bournemouth Lights Fiasco
1. The BBC news is reporting today that a couple are suing the management company of their Bournemouth flat for installing automatic light sensors that will prevent them from using their flat on shabbos. They are claiming religious discrimination.
2. Just a few thoughts.
3. First and foremost, this raises general issues about the use of laws on religious and other discrimination. Laws are no substitute for sense and sensitivity – not to mention manners – all round. The fact that laws have to be cast in wide terms does not mean it is always appropriate to rely upon them: to insist upon ones rights can sometimes help to turn us into a selfish and litigious society, rather than a caring and sensitive one.
4. Secondly, who have these people asked about the position on shabbos? I do not know the precise circumstances of their flat and the positioning and use of these lights. But based on the facts in the news report, if it is forbidden by halochoh to walk past these sensors and turn the lights on, then I am a baked hedgehog with mushroom sauce. Yes, the lights will certainly come on each time – but that doesn’t make it forbidden to walk past them: for those interested in the technicalities, it is a din of misaseik rather than a din of psik reisho. Of course, every case is different and what is permitted in one context may be forbidden in another – but on an issue like this one would need to consult one of the gedolei hador (which for all I know they may have done). A little halachic knowledge is always worse than none – and can lead one to go seriously wrong in either direction.
5. Thirdly, what sort of impression will this give their neighbours of the way Jews behave? Answer: if they lose, bad – and if they win, worse. Why should I insist that my religious principles should cause other people to spend extra money on equipment and electricity, contrary to their economic interests and ecological principles? Not burdening ones neighbours is a significant halachic principle. Standing on our rights rarely makes people think well of us.
6. I may be misjudging these people and their situation seriously – because my comments are based only on the BBC news report: but from what I can make of that, it is possible the whole episode is a serious misjudgment, neither required nor desirable in accordance with halochoh. Of course, there are other factors one would need to take into account before forming a judgment about this behaviour: in particular, what contractual or other commitments were given on the acquisition of the lease and by whom; and what attempts have been made to resolve this issue without recourse to the courts. Overall the news report makes uncomfortable reading, and reminds us of the importance of doing whatever we can to treat, and be seen to treat, our host countries in exile with respect and gratitude, and not to appear to be overly demanding or insensitive to other people’s rights and values.
Converting to Judaism: How to Become Jewish (and Why Not To).
1. I have been threatening for some time to publish my thoughts on how the conversion process works, does not work, and ought to work.
2. I have now done so: How to Become Jewish (And Why Not To) is now in print. It describes itself as an impractical guide to the conversion process, and is certainly not intended to be an authoritative or comprehensive manual. It is written carefully from a point of view likely to annoy all sides of the religious spectrum equally, although it purports to be an orthodox publication and will therefore (probably) annoy the left a little more than the right.
3. The book is available on Amazon and can be ordered through booksellers – ISBN 978 – 1 – 906645 – 96 – 0. But the cheapest way of acquiring it is direct from me at cost (about £6.50, depending on method of payment and delivery requirements): email me at dgreenberg@hotmail.co.uk.
4. The book consists of a series of questions:
Question 1 – Why would anyone want to become Jewish?
Question 2 – How do “regularisation” cases arise?
Question 3 – How do “marriage” cases arise?
Question 4 – Why does anyone want to become a “real” convert?
Question 5 – What exactly is conversion?
Question 6 – How does the process work today in the United Kingdom?
Question 7 – How does the process work in America?
Question 8 – How does the process work in Israel?
Question 9 – What are the basic skills a candidate needs to master?
Question 10 – How much does conversion cost?
Question 11 – How long does the process take?
Question 12 – Will I need to be circumcised?
Question 13 – Which is the best country to convert in?
Question 14 – Which Beth Din should I choose?
Question 15 – Why should I have an orthodox conversion?
Question 16 – Is it really necessary to be so hard on prospective converts?
Question 17 – Why does Judaism not proselytise?
Question 18 – What status do converts have in the Jewish community?
Question 19 – So what does the convert get out of the process?
Question 20 – What kind of Jew should I become?
Question 21 – Need conversion cut me off from my family and friends?
Question 22 – Do I have to be a Zionist to become Jewish?
Question 23 – What most needs to be changed?
5. I have not been able to discover that it is against the rules to use this Blog site for an advertisement – but if anybody knows that it is, please let me know and I will remove this at once. Many thanks.
Money for Nothing?
1. A lovely lady has just died and left her former neighbours around the village of Solva a large amount of money, in a wide variety of bequests.
2. I just heard a radio journalist ask the local publican how he felt about it. He answered “well when someone gives you money for nothing you’re bound to feel good about it”.
3. Thereby missing the point of the bequest. This was not “money for nothing” – it was a celebration of gratitude for real – but intangible – benefits received from the warmth and companionship of the whole village.
4. This lady has taught us a wonderful lesson in the Jewish principle of hakoras hatov – gratitude – one of the key attributes ascribed to the Divine image in which we are all created.
5. What good timing as well: this lesson comes on the eve of Shavuot, on which festival we read about Ruth, another lady who taught the Jewish community a powerful lesson in the practice of our own Jewish values. Ruth, indeed, did it so effectively that the influx of much-needed spiritual energy that she brought to the community was the foundation for the birth and nurture of King David, from whose descendants the Messiah will eventually come. We are much in need of bursts of constructive spiritual energy today – a few more lessons in gratitude like this one, and we may be ready for King David mach 2.
Slumdog Millionaire – “It’s all a muddle”
1. I saw the film Slumdog Millionaire this week. I came away with two enduring impressions.
2. First, unease at how much explicit violence and brutality is thought necessary to maintain the interest of a cinema audience today. Going to the cinema only rarely, it is easier to track the changes. Psychologists argue whether on-screen violence has any effect on real behaviour. The rest of us simply know as a matter of common-sense that of course it does. Desensitise people by exposure to graphic violence on screen, and you numb the sensitivities that preserve the Divine image in which each of us was created.
3. Secondly, the film portrays misery and exploitation on every side. The happy ending is a sugar coating added to the pill as an after-thought, and it is the only implausible part of the film. The rest, the inescapable wretchedness of millions of people’s lives, is entirely plausible.
4. None of this is new, of course. Dickens was portraying the lives of youngsters trapped into crime, prostitution, poverty and beggary many decades ago – and even he was merely continuing an ancient tradition of reporting though fiction what has been a timeless theme of reality. One of Dickens’ characters sums the whole thing up for us remarkably well, in a manner that has rarely been surpassed for accuracy and simplicity – Stephen Blackpool’s oft-repeated exclamation of ultimate hopelessness “It’s all a muddle”. A world in which the only people who seem to have the power to control their own and others’ destinies inevitably misuse and abuse that power, while for everyone else the world is a board-game on which they are the pieces, moved about at the apparently pointless whim of human and God alike.
5. In this week’s Torah reading B’shalach, the Torah explains that God could have taken the Jews out of Egypt by a short route, but He chose the longer one because He was concerned that if the Jews saw battle with the Plishtim they would return to Egypt. Baffling on many counts. (1) If God wants the Plishtim not to attack, He could arrange for that. (2) And if the Plishtim do attack and God wants the Jews to win, He could see to that just as he sees to victory over the Egyptians for them. (3) If God wants to stop the Jews returning to Egypt He again has a number of options – but given the manner of their leaving and their probable reception, return was probably not high on their list of survival strategies.
6. There is the usual range of ways of understanding all this. But to some extent, God has already explained what is going in when He told Moses in last week’s parashah that the exodus was being stage-managed for the purpose of creating the greatest possible impression of God’s powers on the world as a whole, for all time. The Jews are pawns in the game, and the game requires them to be set against the Egyptians and not against the Plishtim. The danger of returning to Egypt is not a danger of actual return, but a danger of returning to the spiritual mentality of the Egyptian culture: the aim of setting the Jews against the Egyptians is to enable the former to rise to the challenge of representing the cultural antithesis of the latter, a people of trust in God and of kindness to each other set against a people of trust only in human strength as epitomised by the successful exploitation of others’ weakness.
7. We are all pawns in God’s game, and sooner or later we all come to realise it. Even the exploiters reach a stage in their lives when they realise that their battle to control events is finally over, and that only God knows what comes next.
8. But there are two ways to be a pawn. One can recognise it from the beginning and submit, realising that it is only the choices that are left to me that matter, and that instead of struggling to expand the boundaries of my own power to control events around me I should concentrate on making the right decisions in relation to matters that appear to be “delegated” to me. Or one can resent the external control and struggle constantly against it, the futility of the exercise being masked by apparent successes from time to time when what God and I want happen to coincide.
9. Much of this week’s parashah is about the Jews’ struggle to understand the right way to be a pawn. And it is difficult: because sometimes the Torah tells me to submit – “God will fight for you, and you should just stay quiet” (Shemos 14:14); and at other times the Torah appears to encourage us to set ourselves targets of a physical kind and not just to rely on God to do the work for us. Getting the balance right is an eternal Jewish preoccupation. But although we will never be satisfied that we have got the balance quite right, at least we understand the aim of the exercise.
10. I will never understand why some people are born in an Indian slum to a life of poverty, easy prey for all kinds of miserable exploitation; any more than I will ever understand why I was not. We are all pawns in God’s game, and nobody asks me to understand it, or even to like it. All I can do is to submit to what I cannot change, and to concentrate on making good choices where I appear to be given the ability to change anything. Sometimes my path in the game will come so close to someone else’s that I have the ability to make theirs easier for them: when that happens I get pleasure from my apparent ability to help them, although in reality the help comes from God who put Pawn A into the path of Pawn B at the right time. So long as I don’t take my own part in it too seriously, no harm is done.
The Sceptic Blog 