Weekly Items of Note (3/20)
David Shasha
“Open” Orthodoxy and AIPAC
I have been discussing the problem of Yeshivat Chovevei Torah and its radical founder Rabbi Avi Weiss for some time now:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/davidshasha/yct/davidshasha/JPZFturnQkQ/FX8HLC0KgtoJ
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/davidshasha/yct/davidshasha/DPXgyW5KkZQ/fV41g72MXsEJ
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/davidshasha/yct/davidshasha/fnOeTywoel8/c4qUXb1i7IUJ
The Religion News Service published an excellent profile of Weiss that I re-posted in SHU 674:
Here is the direct link to the original article:
http://www.religionnews.com/2015/01/29/avi-weiss-rabble-rouser-rabbi-takes-stock-activist-career/
So when I read in the YCT newsletter this week that the school proudly sent a delegation to the AIPAC conference, I was not at all surprised:
https://www.facebook.com/asher.lopatin/posts/10153012149606117
Sadly, what is being touted as a great Liberal advance in Orthodox Judaism is in fact part of the most radical element of contemporary Zionism. We must distinguish between the strictly ritual elements of Jewish Law and the larger political framework and ethical context of Judaism.
Sadly, we have seen Weiss and the editor of the YCT literary journal Daniel Ross Goodman ally themselves with the Far Right element of the American political spectrum.
So do not be fooled by “Open” Orthodoxy; it is not open at all.
The Violence at Donald Trump Rallies, Free Speech, and Rule of Law
There has been much discussion about what happened last week in Chicago at a Donald Trump rally:
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/donald-trump-chicago-rally-violence-thugs-election-2016/
There is little question that Candidate Trump has been quite cavalier with his outrageous statements on race and has encouraged his racist supporters in their prejudices. He has thoughtlessly used violent rhetoric when describing his enemies, seeming to give a green light to his supporters in their aggressive stance towards protesters.
There is also little question that his speech is protected by our Constitution, and that his public rallies are entitled to the same Constitutional protection as any other political gathering.
Whether or not we approve or disapprove of Trump’s often hysterical and incendiary rhetoric, there is a larger issue here that must not be ignored: He must be able to speak as he likes without fear of being silenced by his enemies.
The anti-Trump protestors also have legal rights, but those rights do not include forcing Trump to be silent.
Protesters should be provided ample space outside the venues where Trump is speaking, and those that enter the venues in order to prevent Trump from peacefully conducting his rallies should be removed by the proper legal authorities in a reasonable fashion.
All those who commit acts of violence should be prosecuted to the full extent of the Law.
It is not only a matter of Rule of Law – which is important in and of itself – but a matter of political tactics: Disrupting Trump rallies only serves to give the candidate and his supporters what they want, and will further feed his anti-establishment mania as it marks him and his group as outsiders who seek to battle the system.
A short time after I wrote this note I discovered that Commentary magazine agrees with me!
Now John Podhoretz and his writers hate Trump, so it might not be worth much in the bigger scheme of things. But I always like to point out when Commentary and I agree – it is a rare moment!
David Bowie Tribute on the BRIT Awards
For those who might have missed it, I wrote a lengthy essay on the seminal music of the great David Bowie in honor of his recent passing:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/davidshasha/a7300uSO5aE
The American Grammy Awards handed the mandatory Bowie tribute to Lady Gaga:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3fGBZhsa4VU
Gaga decided to do a medley that would re-create the various stages of Bowie’s changing images and she did a credible job singing the songs, but lacked the inspiration that made his music so fresh and original. Her vocal range allowed her to re-produce the vocals with a smooth professionalism, but the performance was perfunctory rather than inspirational.
The BRIT Awards last month contained a truly moving set of tributes from Annie Lennox and Bowie’s personal friend, the actor Gary Oldman:
http://www.vulture.com/2016/02/watch-lordes-david-bowie-tribute-at-the-brits.html
When we see such tributes the feeling we get so often is one of overkill and overpraise; but in the case of these speeches the superlatives are not over the top or excessive. Bowie truly was that rare artist who deserved the highest accolades.
But the same cannot be said for Lorde’s performance of “Life on Mars?” which showed the vast difference between the current generation and Bowie’s complex artistry.
Lorde is one of the most popular singers of the day, and yet her vocal range is extremely limited; her tone monochromatic to the point of dullness. I have never really understood why she is so venerated; other than the fact that she stands in stark contrast to the usual Poptrash vacuousness as she promises a “deeper” message that verges on the Goth-kids clichés that we have seen parodied on South Park.
In any case “Life on Mars?” is too much song for her – I am not sure who could do it justice among today’s young artists – and it presents a contrast with Gaga’s slick professionalism; neither artist can truly channel the great genius of Bowie’s Art.
1. Last Sunday John Oliver, usually so reliable on most issues, made two big missteps on issues we have previously discussed.
His main story dealt with computer encryption and specifically referenced the Apple controversy:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zsjZ2r9Ygzw
The discussion never fully clarified the three basic issues involved in the matter: There are the computer companies and their very complicated encoding programs, there are the hackers, and there is government Law Enforcement. Oliver muddled these intersecting forces as he tried hard to undermine the Rule of Law argument.
We have seen the problem brilliantly presented in Michael Mann’s recent movie “Blackhat” in a way that shows the connection between these three elements:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/23/movies/blackhat-michael-manns-cyberthriller.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackhat_(film)
In the movie the government deploys a criminal hacker in order to break the codes of the terrorists.
Oliver never really comes to grips with the complication presented by hackers who have the ability to break the encryptions as the government tries to get Apple to do the same thing.
Who can break the codes and how do they do it?
Is it necessary to create a software program to open all iPhones to open the ones that are being served warrants?
That is not what the hackers have taught us.
Oliver presents a Leftist PILPUL in his discussion that mentions the Rule of Law issue in passing, but ultimately rejects it as a requirement in the ongoing attempt to balance security with the legitimate needs of the police. In his discussion we see a great distrust for the government that continues to pervade the Progressive community.
And then there was a brief segment on the Donald Trump Chicago rally violence that we discussed earlier:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/03/14/john-oliver-of-course-trump-incites-violence.html
While it remains true that Trump is a bad actor in all this, Oliver never once addressed the issue of the protesters and their own violent and disruptive tendencies.
Again, the question that should be addressed to the Left is: What are the legal and ethical limits of protest and when does protest become an attempt to violate Free Speech rights?
Trump must certainly be held accountable for any violence committed at his rallies against peaceful protesters.
It is also true that the protesters must act within the Law and not seek to bully anyone into silence.
2. HBO is currently screening the movie adaptation of the Broadway play “Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar and Grill”:
http://www.hbo.com/lady-day-at-emersons-bar-and-grill/article/index.html
The movie is a chilling and uncomfortably claustrophobic presentation of Billie Holiday performing at a small club in Philadelphia near the end of her life in 1959.
The concert is punctuated by spoken vignettes that gradually show Holiday’s psychological torment as she recounts in disconnected fragments the very painful stories from her life which include racism, rape, and persecution.
Audra MacDonald does a brilliant and quite uncanny job in reproducing Holiday’s characteristic vocal style, but more than that she generates a cold-blooded intensity in painting a portrait of both a great Artist and a deeply troubled soul who often lost control of her emotions for quite understandable reasons.
The presentation does not tell us the full story of Holiday’s life and musical career, but uses the concert as a springboard to riff on the episodes from a very complicated life; thus telling us the story of racism in America and how those depredations affected one of the great singers of the 20th century.
3. Like father, like son:
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4777471,00.html
It appears that Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef, the Chief “Sephardic” rabbi of Israel, is following in his father’s footsteps in promoting the Ashkenazi Haredi Jewish weltanschauung.
Sephardic Jewish Humanism is as alien to him as it was to his father.
Rack up another victor for Ponovitch!
4. To be honest, I am always on the lookout for Jews who love the apostate Spinoza.
When I saw the following post from Kveller I got my wish:
Everyone seems to love apostate Jews – no one seems to love Sephardim.
Spinoza was a Sephardi who hated Sephardim – so he fits the bill perfectly.
Rebecca Goldstein has written a valentine to Spinoza:
http://www.amazon.com/Betraying-Spinoza-Renegade-Modernity-Encounters/dp/0805211594
As we can see from the title of her book, it was not Spinoza who betrayed the Jews, but the Jews who betrayed Spinoza!
I was thus very intrigued to read that “smugness in all its forms” is Goldstein’s pet peeve.
It is quite ironic given that there was no one more smug and self-assured about his superiority to others than Spinoza.
Spinoza was a philosopher of absolutes who thought that he, and only he, knew the truth.
We should introduce Rabbi Nathan Lopes Cardozo to Goldstein; they both seem to love that heretic:
http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/for-gods-sake-remove-the-ban-on-spinoza/
As the Sephardim continue to falter, it is good to know that Spinoza continues to gain strength.
5. It must really be difficult to be David Brooks.
I needed to read his Tuesday column a few times to fully grasp just how truly agonizing this struggle is:
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/15/opinion/the-shame-culture.html?ref=opinion
He starts off with an extremely important insight: the current version of Political Correctness has many of the coercive features of the Right Wingers during the 1980s Culture Wars.
But he then swerves from the thesis, largely because he remains on the side of Right Wingers like Allan Bloom, in order to construct a PILPUL that instructs us how the new PC Millennials and the old Right Wing Culture Warriors are not the same.
We are then treated to a tortuous parsing of the terms “Guilt” and “Shame” as understood by a writer in Christianity Today.
As with all PILPUL discourse, the whole thing is a smokescreen, and the commonality between the new rigidity and the old rigidity are not really so far apart. Both movements are based on the imposition of a strict intellectual orthodoxy and rigid codifications of ideological principles that are punished or rewarded with in-group acceptance or rejection.
Though Brooks never admits it, the current situation shows how the current PC of the Left has taken a page from the old Right Wingers and turned the tables on them.
Brooks, who thinks in such rigid authoritarian categories, is unable to pick apart the problem presented by this type of thinking because he continues to firmly believe that he is right and the Leftists are wrong.
Nowhere in the discussion do we see the promotion of intellectual values and rationality to establish basic principles that can form the basis of a social consensus. Each side has dug in and will fight for their beliefs until the bitter end.
We already know which side of the cultural debate Brooks is on; his typically pompous analysis of the situation attempts to beat back the Liberal PC smacks of intellectual dishonesty as if his partisanship is better than that of his enemies. In spite of his pretenses to the contrary, he is no objective analyst; he is an active partisan in what has become an intractable struggle between opposing political elements in our society.
It should be clear that both sides of the Left-Right divide have corrupted the process and created a tense environment where the freedom to speak and think has been curtailed in the name of ideological purity.
It is all so very Ashkenazi.
6. Dror Eydar provides an excellent example of the Right Wing hypocrisy that David Brooks represents:
http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=15515
The Zionist absolutists have tried to suppress and demonize all criticism of their beliefs, and yet when the tables are turned on them we see them screaming like banshees.
Eydar is all for freedom of speech, except when it is extended to critics of Israel and its policies.
7. I have often been quite critical of President Obama, but I must say that his strategy to trump the Republicans on the Supreme Court nominee is one of the most brilliant pieces of politics I have ever seen.
Judge Garland has the following points of note:
He has been feted by both Orrin Hatch and John Roberts.
He has passed his Senate confirmation as DC Circuit Court judge.
He is relatively old for a SCOTUS nominee – 63.
He is Jewish.
He prosecuted the Oklahoma City bombing case.
He is Harvard Law – like Obama and Ted Cruz.
He is political moderate.
And it appears that the Hard Left is not so happy about the nominee:
It remains unlikely that the Republican radicals that are in control of the Senate will relent from their Anti-Constitutional proclivities and consent to an up-or-down vote for the nominee, but we must give the president credit for a brilliant act of politicking that will put pressure on Republican senate candidates in Blue states.
8. The following story shows us just how important even very young Ashkenazi Jews are:
The story about the six-year old child and her “crusade” against The New Yorker for its policy on age requirements for submissions is on the one hand about Millennial privilege and entitlement, but more than this it is about the pretenses of New York Jews and their overinflated sense of their own importance.
We have a child in Kindergarten who is involved with The New Yorker; itself a sign of the pomposity of Jewish parents who expose their children to such adult material at such a young age.
One would think that these children are more intelligent than those who watch cartoons and play video games, when in point of fact the overachievers that I have seen – at least when they are a bit older – pretend to know more than they actually do and have done little to move the needle on the massive problems that face the Jewish community.
If these wunderkids are such geniuses, why is the Jewish community in such dire straits today?
That the story was published in the racist Forward tells us what we need to know about White Jewish privilege and the failure of the Jewish community to protect its traditional values and intellectual heritage. We are dumber now than at any other time in our long history as a people.
9. Rabbi Nathan Lopes Cardozo’s article on Purim, Divine Providence, and Religious Zionism is a perfect example of the delusions of those Jews who believe that human beings can bring on God’s Redemption:
http://www.cardozoacademy.info/thoughts-to-ponder/purim-gods-hidden-face-advantage-permanent-job/
Cardozo tells us that the State of Israel “overflows with divine sparks” at the same time that he chastises what he calls the “nationalistic excesses of religious Zionism.”
Which is it then?
Is the State of Israel Divinely-ordained, or is it the work of human beings?
Cardozo, like many Religious Zionists, is confused and has no definitive answer.
But as we have learned the hard way, Religious Zionism is moving in the direction of Divine Providence for its nationalism; thus leading to the excesses that Cardozo decries.
Once the genie is out of the bottle it is difficult if not impossible to stop the Redemption train from moving along at its own breakneck pace. The Settler messianists take Cardozo’s basic proposition on the Divine role in the founding of the State of Israel, and develop their violent nationalistic theology accordingly.
It is Religious Zionism that lit the flame of fanaticism, which it now claims to disavow.
10. The website Religion Dispatches posted the following item on the “Biblical” rapper Kendrick Lamar:
I have already written about Lamar’s profane vulgarity in the context of the new “radical” Black activism:
What we have is a fusion of Black radical values with Corporate Hip-Hop and its crudely obscene presentation of sexuality and casual misogyny and homophobia.
We are definitely seeing a trend to compartmentalize issues and values in a way that compromises moral rectitude.
11. The following article on police misuse of personal information on computer databases speaks in a clever way to the current Apple controversy:
The Limousine Liberals are all in huff over the privacy issue presented by the Apple case, which is more about Corporate profits than Civil Liberties.
The Denver report shows the way in which such information is exaggerated, as the violations described amount to 25 over a ten year period.
Let it be said that any and all violation of privacy must be punished severely, but we must not use such examples as constitutive of the entire police enforcement system, as the Times would probably like us to do.
There is a mistrust of law enforcement on the Left which is similar to that of the 1960s and which led to the election of Richard Nixon under a “Law and Order” platform.
I believe that it is a big mistake for Liberals to summarily attack law enforcement in the Apple case; especially when we see the company’s CEO Tim Cook working with other Silicon Valley corporate titans to protect their financial interests.
David Shasha