David Brooks: Obama’s Christian Realism - NYTimes.com

In the NYT times today, David Brooks writes in Obama’s Christian Realism that Obama's liberal realism is based on Christian dualism, an acknowledgment that each of us carries the instinct for both good and evil: "[A]s you act to combat evil, you wouldn’t want to get carried away by your own righteousness or be seduced by the belief that you are innocent. Even fighting evil can be corrupting." No person or group of people, no matter how righteous and God-fearing they may be, should trust that their intentions will lead inexorably to good outcomes. They must be vigilant not only of their enemies, but of themselves.

What strikes me is that this understanding pre-dates Christianity. It is part of the Jewish belief in the Yetzer HaTov [instinct for good] and Yetzer HaRa [instinct for evil]. Each of us in endowed with both instincts. Judaism takes this notion further, finding this fact to be a positive statement about our humanity. The Yetzer HaTov is clearly the instinct that we would choose to be primary in our lives. But, according to Midrash (Bereishit Rabbah 9:7), “were it not for the Yetzer HaRa, a person would not build a house and would not marry and would not procreate and would not deal in business.” Thus, Judaism recognizes that even the evil inclination has a purpose that can lead to a good outcome. Capitalism is based on the notion that the pursuit of selfish interests can lead to economic value for all.

But, we need to be constantly aware that this inclination is at least as likely to lead to outcomes that can be destructive. Thus, we limit and restrain ourselves. David Brooks quotes Harry Truman, “We all have to recognize, no matter how great our strength, that we must deny ourselves the license to do always as we please.”

Cake Fight in Israel

The Media Line carries an article today that reports that the Israeli High Court has gotten involved in the issuance of Kashrut certificates. Specifically, whether a Kashrut certificate can be denied to a Messianic Jew. Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar wants the Knesset to draft a law that would ban the Israeli courts from getting involved in Kashrut

The chief rabbi's request follows a ruling by the high court that the Rabbinate had illegally revoked the kosher certification of a pastry shop owned by a woman who believes in Messianic Judaism, a movement that combines elements of both Judaism and Christianity.

This would seem to be a simple case of discrimination. Certainly a non-Jew can operate a Kosher establishment. But, buried in the article, is an important point that has me agreeing with those who argue that the High Court ruled incorrectly and should not have gotten involved:

The rabbinate had demanded that a kosher supervisor be given the keys to the pastry shop so as to ensure that kosher standards were adhered to.

Normally, I am as ready as any secular Israeli to assume the worst of the Rabbinate, but in this case, I think that they have a point.If they refuse to grant a Kashrut certificate under any circumstances, that is grounds to argue discrimination. However, implied by the article, they would grant the certificate if they were able to adequately inspect the facility operated by a non-Jew. So long as this approach is consistent with what they would do for any facility owned and operated by a non-Jew and does not preclude the owner from running his or her business, it seems to be a legitimate step to ensure that the store that they have certified as Kosher actually is.

Who Needs ID? – Part One | Cross-Currents

Who Needs ID? – Part One | Cross-Currents - a Reaction

Yitzchok Adlerstein writes an interesting piece about Evolution and Intelligent Design in Cross Currents. What makes it interesting is that Adlerstein is a generally a hard-line, fundamentalist Haredi who has little patience for those who would evince any doubt about the divine origins of Torah and the ultimate and exclusive correctness of his brand of Judaism. Having just finished Karen Armstrong's book "A Case for God", I understand a little better why a fundamentalist feels the need to reconcile his religious view with science. To Adlerstein's credit, he is not just rejecting science, but trying to come to terms with it:

Maybe I’m not properly Orthodox, but evolution is just not an issue for me. [...] I recognize that I am in the minority in this regard (although not so sure if this is true for frum folks with scientific background), but I made peace with evolution years ago. I’m neither convinced of its truth (although it explains volumes of collected phenomena that no one in the frum community even begins to deal with) nor convinced of its untruth. Of course I reject one small assumption made by some evolutionists, including the most strident and vocal ones. They believe that not only did G-d have no part in it, but that having adequately explained the Great Mystery of Life, there is no need to believe in G-d, c”v. My belief is that if the Ribbono Shel Olam set up the original conditions, including the physical constants of nature in such a way as to produce the world as we know it, using natural selection and about 15 billion years (a span of time so large I simply can’t wrap my mind around it to decide whether the scenario is plausible or ludicrous), I for one would have no objection. As R Samson Raphael Hirsch wrote in the infancy of the theory – well before he could, in all fairness, properly analyze it, but also before over a century of corroborating evidence – if the theory turns out to be true, we will stand in even greater awe of the wisdom of HKBH. There is wondrous elegance in reducing all of existence to what was contained in the singularity that preceded the laws of nature as we know them. Reducing all there is to a mysterious oneness has great appeal to me.

Adlerstein has been willing to loosen his grip on a literalist meaning of the Torah, at least the first chapters that describe in decidely non-scientific terms the creation of the world. This can be no easy feat for someone so squarely in the Haredi camp. He goes on to acknowledge the advantages of a non-literalist view to the scientist: "Evolution provides a framework for understanding much of the natural world... The language of biology is the language of evolution, and it has been that way for decades."

But Adlerstein knows that there are many in the Haredi camp may be better off simply keeping science at an arms length:

If you have no occasion to ever step over the threshold of modern science, there would seem to be little reason to abandon the plain meaning of the opening of Bereishis. This seems to be the message of quite a few Gedolei Torah who live in communities in which science simply doesn’t figure. Their advice should be vigorously heeded.

It is unfortunate that Adlerstein thinks that anyone should heed advice to remain ignorant. Ignorance is the antithesis of what Judaism stands for; Judaism has always been a search for truth. The greatest Jewish theologians and thinkers have been those who have understood that truth is elusive and conditional, subject to change and refinement through the introduction of new data.

But all of this discussion could be simply avoided by acknowledging that the purpose of science is neither to prove the existence of G-d nor to describe G-d's ways in the world. Neither is subject to scientific proof nor can they be disproved by any scientific method. Science, not religion, can explain the physical processes by which the piece of rock on which we exist came into being. Science, not religion, can explain the biological mechanisms by which single-cell protozoa may have mutated and evolved into human beings as well as other species. But science can provide no moral reason for that mutation, nor should it try. Having become human, science can not tell us how to live our lives with meaning, cope with adversity, die with dignity, and find our way to the bright light that is G-d's love - that is the realm of religion. So, I agree with Adlerstein (a rarity) when he says: "I feel comfortable getting up in the morning and shouting, 'Mah rabu ma’asecheh Hashem…!'"

Who Is a Jew? Court Ruling in Britain Raises Question - NYTimes.com

Who Is a Jew? Court Ruling in Britain Raises Question - NYTimes.com The New York Times reports on a case in Great Britain in which a family is suing a Jewish Day School because the school rejected their son's application to the school.

A few of the relevant facts of the case:

• The boy's father is acknowledged to be a Jew.


• The boy's mother is a convert in the Progressive movement (the European equivalent of Reform)


• Religious schools receive funding from the state

The family sued and lost in the lower court, but the appeals court overturned that decision stating: “The requirement that if a pupil is to qualify for admission his mother must be Jewish, whether by descent or conversion, is a test of ethnicity which contravenes the Race Relations Act,” the court said. It added that while it was fair that Jewish schools should give preference to Jewish children, the admissions criteria must depend not on family ties, but “on faith, however defined.”

The case is now before the English Supreme Court.

I have no insight into English jurisprudence, but it seems to me that the argument of the decision of the appellate court is right but for the wrong reason. The appellate court should not get involved in the question of whether a Jew is anyone who calls themselves a Jew. If a religion sets certain tests on one's membership, that is the business of the religious community and the state should not get involved. Where the court should get involved is to decide how the state determines where the authority for determining religious membership lies. Does the state recognize different types of Judaism (Orthodox, Progressive, Liberal, Reform, Conservative, Reconstructionist, Humanist, etc) or does the state recognize only a religion called Judaism? If the former, then the state has determined that there are actually many different religions, each calling itself Jewish, but each in fact distinct and therefore entitled to define membership according to its own rules. However, if the state determines that there is only one religion called Judaism within which there are several legitimate but variant streams, then the state may elect to recognize that any person who is acceptable to one of those streams is a Jew for the purpose of the state's functions. The state may also choose to disenfranchise all of the streams but one or to create tests that allow a determination of what is considered a legitimate stream for the purpose of state recognition within the body called Jews.

The mistake that the appellate court makes is in trying to make a state determination of who is a Jew. The court would be better off determining who can legitimately make that determination within the competing Jewish claims.

But most important for Americans, this is a cautionary example of the slippery slope that could affect Jews in this country should state financing of private, religious schools be enacted. Once a school opts to accept state financing, whether offered directly in the form of grants or indirectly in the form of vouchers, the school loses substantial control to determine who may and may not attend the school. In a school whose population is itself a statement about the school's philosophy, this could be a serious challenge to their identity.

One could use this case to warn those in the religious community who support school vouchers to be careful what they wish for.

Send Bush | Capital J | JTA - Jewish & Israel News

Send Bush as Middle East Envoy: Ami Eden notes that "Writing in Newsweek, Gregory Levey argues that President Obama should tap President George W. Bush to be his Middle East envoy..."

Levey writes: "During the Bush years, Israelis were consistently among the few foreign populations that gave the American president high approval marks -- often in far greater proportion than Americans themselves... Neither Obama nor his proxies enjoy anywhere near the same level of faith. ..."

How does this make any sense. Send someone who is a proxy for the Israelis and whose every proposal will be seen as an Israeli proposal and not as a third-party U.S. proposal? This makes no sense at all.

Obama is in a much stronger position to move the Palestinians towards the measures that they have to take to make negotiation acceptable - unfortunately, there is no Israeli partner anymore either. So, for the time being, Obama would best serve the interests of the Middle East by keeping an engaged mediator who will help to defuse tensions and keep low-level talks going until both parties are ready and able to move to more serious final stage talks.

The Kosher Pig

From Maariv

האם קיים איסור על אכילת בשר חזיר?
לא. במשרד הבריאות מבהירים כי אין כל חשש מאכילת מזונות וכי “המחלה איננה מועברת במזון”. בארגון הבריאות העולמי מדגישים כי אין חשש מאכילת בשר חזיר שבושל כהלכה

Is there a prohibition to eat pork? No! The Ministry of Health clarifies that there is no danger in food consumption. The disease is not transmitted through food. The WHO emphasizes that there is nothing to be concerned about in eating pork that is cooked according to Halacha

From "Heretics and Humility"

In reaction to the 200 anniversary of Charles Darwin's birth: Avi Shafran writes in Cross-Currents:

Part of evolution’s upshot, of course, is that living things forever remain mere works in progress, which lends the hoopla over Darwin a tasty irony, since precisely the same is true about science. Even as seemingly perfect a system as Newtonian mechanics was subsumed, subtly but conclusively, by Einstein. Yet those who elevate Darwin’s theory to an article of faith seem unwilling to even consider that the current understanding of how species came about might one day be explained by a different and grander, if currently unimagined, conclusion than the one reached by the famed biologist. The idea that earth’s astounding array of life may owe itself to something other than the random mutation of species into others – a metamorphosis never reproduced in any laboratory – is a forbidden thought. Imagining “a biological Einstein,” to borrow Verlyn Klinkenborg’s phrase, has become heresy.

Shafran, to his credit, doesn't try to debunk evolution so much as to rail against those who accept it uncritically. However, we know that this is a thin veil for the type of pseudo-scientific rantings of the religious right who try to take scripture and turn it into a science textbook.

Shafran writes:

Thus, efforts to permit open discussion of Darwinism are derided as a “war on science.” And a leading scientific group is boycotting Louisiana because a law there permits teachers to use supplemental texts to “help students critique and review scientific theories.” And the Texas Board of Education is being petitioned to amend the state curriculum so that students are no longer encouraged to explore “the strengths and weaknesses” of all scientific theories – words, the petitioners say, that dangerously suggest that Darwinism could be wrong.

What he fails to say is that the Louisiana and Texas issues are the maddening attempt by the religious right to inject religious belief into the science lab. To suggest that religious belief can substitute for or be used to critique science to fail to understand both science and religion. Science is the attempt to explain physical behavior through verifiable and testable models. Religion is an attempt to explain the metaphysical and inherently unknowable reasons behind the physical world. The two have no place side by side because they explore entirely different propositions.

Shafran calls for humility among those who accept the theory of evolution:

A little humility would help us recognize that, no matter our scientific progress, we humans resemble nothing so much as the proverbial blind men first contemplating an elephant, each touching a different part of the pachyderm and concluding that the beast is shaped, variously, like a tree, or a snake, or a sail or a wall. No, not an elephant; we are blind men confronting a rainbow.

Perhaps some humility among the religous right, acknowledging their limited ability to comprehend the will and working of G-d, would be similarly welcome

A Huge Mistake: OU says Lookstein broke their rules

The JTA reports: "A Rabbinical Council of America official told JTA that Rabbi Haskel Lookstein, the religious leader of Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun in New York City, broke the organization's rules by participating in the service Wednesday at the National Cathedral on the morning after Barack Obama's inauguration."

This is a huge mistake by the OU to have even released the press release. I understand that they, mistakenly, believe that it is inappropriate for a Jew to enter a space used by another religion (church, mosque, temple, etc), but it is a big political mistake to make a big deal of it on the day of Barack Obama's inauguration. The OU should have simply looked the other way and let it go.