Arun Gandhi apology and resignation

Arun Gandhi has resigned from the peace institute he headed at the University of Rochester.

He issued an apology a few days after his original column -

I am writing to correct some regrettable mis-impressions I have given in my comments on my blog this week. While I stand behind my criticisms of the use of violence by recent Israeli governments -- and I have criticized the governments of the U.S., India and China in much the same way -- I want to correct statements that I made with insufficient care, and that have inflicted unnecessary hurt and caused anger.

I do not believe and should not have implied that the policies of the Israeli government are reflective of the views of all Jewish people. Indeed, many are as concerned as I am by the use of violence for state purposes, by Israel and many other governments.

This is the point that I found most offensive in his remarks - the conflation of the actions of the state of Israel with all Jews, indiscriminately. If he wishes to condemn the actions of Israel, I have no problems with that, and may agree with him in some instances. But on the other hand, even if Jews don't agree with me or with him, that still does not mean that they are guilty of the inciting to violence that he accused us all of.

I do believe that when a people hold on to historic grievances too firmly it can lead to bitterness and the loss of support from those who would be friends. But as I have noted in previous writings, the suffering of the Jewish people, particularly in the Holocaust, was historic in its proportions. While we must strive for a future of peace that rejects violence, it is also important not to forget the past, lest we fail to learn from it. Having learned from it, we can then find the path to peace and rejection of violence through forgiveness.

It is certainly a feature of contemporary American Jewish life that the Holocaust does sometimes become the core of people's Jewish identity - I think that this is damaging to people who do this. How can something as horrific as the Holocaust be the foundation of a positive identity? The Jewish tradition is ancient and rich - this is what we should be learning about and transmitting to the next generation. But unfortunately, it is not possible to ignore the Holocaust and its continuing impact on Jews, even those in the third generation after the events of the Shoah.

I do have a fundamental theological disagreement with Arun Gandhi, about the role of forgiveness. According to traditional Jewish thinking, if someone offends you in some way - injures you physically, steals from you, defames you - then there is no requirement to forgive that person for the offense. If, however, the perpetrator comes to you and asks for forgiveness, and offers compensation for your losses, then it is incumbent upon you to forgive that person. If you refuse to do so, then the Jewish court (beit din) can offer the perpetrator forgiveness on your behalf. But the perpetrator's repentance and compensation are integral parts of the process of forgiveness.

How, then, can Jews forgive the perpetrators of the Holocaust? Those who committed the crimes have not come to the Jewish people either individually or as a group to ask for forgiveness, nor have they offered compensation. Adolf Eichmann had to be dragged out of his hiding place by the Mossad - he didn't turn himself in with statements of regret and remorse. If you watch the movie "Shoah" by Claude Lanzmann, he interviewed utterly unrepentant Nazis.

And then, who is it that has the right to give forgiveness? The millions of dead cannot offer forgiveness, because they are gone. The survivors of the killing? Well, have the perpetrators asked their forgiveness? I haven't heard of any such cases. The children of survivors? They are not the ones who directly suffered at the hands of the Nazis? The Jewish people as a whole? How can we offer forgiveness on behalf of others who might not agree with us?

I think that individual forgiveness can be an important part of engaging in a nonviolent struggle against oppression - by someone who has decided to take on that responsibility. But I don't see how Arun Gandhi or anyone else can ask "the Jews" as a people to grant forgiveness.

We certainly cannot blame Germans who lived after the Second World War of complicity in crimes committed before their birth - but I see no reason to forgive those who destroyed one third of the Jewish people.

Holocaust Memorial Day 2008

Norm Geras has posted several moving comments on Holocaust Memorial Day 2008. See especially what he has to say about Hannah Arendt's idea of the "banality of evil" and about Primo Levi's testimony on Auschwitz. (Today is Holocaust Memorial Day in Europe - on the anniversary of the day that the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp was liberated by the Soviet army in 1945).

Kennedy Plans to Back Obama Over Clinton

This is exciting - Ted Kennedy Plans to Back Obama Over Clinton.

Obama wins South Carolina

Barack Obama appears to have won the South Carolina primary by a sizable margin - 53% to Clinton's 27% and Edwards' 20%. I'm happy to see this because I'm seriously considering voting for him. Hillary Clinton is extremely knowledgeable on many issues - when the whole subprime mess was really beginning to affect the stock market a couple of weeks ago, I heard her speaking on the issues very fluently (and making a lot of sense). But I really like Obama's tone of hopefulness, and the fact that he doesn't bring the Bill Clinton baggage to the race that Hillary does. I haven't liked Bill's recent attacks on Obama at all - they seem quite slimy to me. (See Josh Marshall's discussion of this on Talking Points Memo - The Problem with Bill 2.0).

Oh, and Caroline Kennedy is endorsing Barack Obama (in tomorrow's New York Times). (Of course, she doesn't determine who I'm going to vote for, but I think it's interesting that she's doing so).

Bob Herbert (in today's NYT - Questions for the Clinton) discusses the dubious tactics used by Hillary Clinton's supporters, like Andrew Young and Bob Kerrey (who raised the "Obama is a Muslim" red herring at the same time as he denied doing it!). He ends his column by saying, "What kind of people are the Clintons? What role will Bill Clinton play in a new Clinton White House?" I have the same questions - does Bill Clinton now imagine that he'll be his wife's co-president? Do we want the continuation of another dynasty?

The "Obama is a Muslim" e-mail reached me via a Jewish friend - the text and a thorough rebuttal of all its claims are available at Snopes.com - Who is Barack Obama?. Shortly after I received the e-mail, nine major Jewish organizations issued a public statement denouncing these internet rumors - see 9 Jewish Leaders Say E-Mail Spread Lies About Obama.

The letter was signed by: "William Daroff, vice president of United Jewish Communities; Nathan J. Diament, director of the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America; Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League; Richard S. Gordon, president of the American Jewish Congress; David Harris, executive director of the American Jewish Committee; Rabbi Marvin Hier, dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center; Rabbi David Saperstein, director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism; Phyllis Snyder, president of the National Council of Jewish Women; and Hadar Susskind, Washington director of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs."

CNN on Ron Paul's racism

As I had hoped, the fact that the story about Ron Paul's racism was finally written about in a mainstream media outlet - the New Republic - means that other mainstream media will pick up the story. Today's CNN Politics report includes an article about Ron Paul 90s newsletters rant against blacks, gays. Let's see now what other major media will pick up the story.

(Mahatma) Gandhi and the Jews

Harry's Place has dredged up two of Gandhi's more notorious quotes about the Jews, nonviolence, and the Holocaust (Gandhi's article can be found here: Gandhi). In 1938 he recommended nonviolent resistance against Nazi persecution in Germany, and seemed convinced that if Jews willingly offered their lives, this would result in a moral reformation of the German people.

He was also opposed to Zionism, partially on the grounds that the Jews should prefer to be citizens of the countries where they lived (England, France, Germany) and should fight for their rights in those places. (Obviously at the time this would not have worked in Germany!) He also thought that Zionism was unjust to the Arabs of Palestine. One curious part of his position was that although he opposed the Jewish use of violence in Palestine against Arabs, he did not object to the Arab use of violence against Jews. He says: "I am not defending the Arab excesses. I wish they had chosen the way of non-violence in resisting what they rightly regarded as an unwarrantable encroachment upon their country. But according to the accepted canons of right and wrong, nothing can be said against the Arab resistance in the face of overwhelming odds." It is very curious, in my opinion, that he would so fiercely condemn Jewish use of violence without at the same condemning Arab use of violence. He does not recommend that the Arabs use satyagraha against the British or Jews in Palestine. (The context for this article was the 1936-39 Arab Revolt against British rule and Jewish settlement in Palestine).

In 1939, Martin Buber wrote an open letter to Gandhi offering a rejoinder to his views on Zionism and the situation of the German Jews. (Partial text found at the Jewish Virtual Library - Buber to Gandhi). I found a precis of his letter on the National Review online site:

In a thoughtful personal response dated February 24, 1939, the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber — who had himself emigrated to Israel from Germany a short time earlier and combined his Zionism with earnest efforts to peacefully reconcile Jewish and Arab claims in the Holy Land — chided Gandhi for offering advice to the Jews without any recognition of their real situation. The individual acts of persecution that Indians had suffered in South Africa in the 1890’s hardly compared, Buber noted, to the synagogue burnings and concentration camps instituted by Hitler’s regime. Nor was there any evidence that the many instances in which German Jews peacefully displayed strength of spirit in response to their persecutors had exercised any influence on the latter. While Gandhi exhorted them to bear “testimony” to the world by their conduct, the fate of the Jews in Germany was to experience only an “unobserved martyrdom” without effect.

Turning to Gandhi’s allegation that to claim a homeland in Palestine was inconsistent with the Jews’ claims to equal citizenship in the other countries of their birth, Buber recalled to him that the Indians of South Africa whose cause Gandhi had championed themselves drew sustenance from the existence of India as their “living center.” It was only the existence of such a home that made Diaspora tolerable, respectively (Buber added) for both Jews and Indians.

As for Gandhi’s denial that the Jews had any place in Palestine, since it “belonged” to the resident Arab population, Buber reminded him that the Arabs themselves had previously acquired the land by virtue of a “conquest of settlement” — in contrast to the peaceful methods of the Jews in purchasing land there. Why, indeed, in view of the “primitive” state of Arab agriculture, should Palestinian land be held to belong exclusively to the Arabs, when Jewish settlers had done far more to develop that land’s fertility in the past 50 years than the Arabs in the preceding 1,300? With proper development, there was no reason that the land of Palestine might not support millions of Jewish refugees along with resident Arabs at a far higher standard of living than the latter had heretofore enjoyed. Finally, Buber reminded Gandhi that when the subject was the rights of Indians, as opposed to those of the Jews, Gandhi himself had remarked (in 1922) that he had “repeatedly said that I would have India become free even by violence rather than that she should remain in bondage.”

Arun Gandhi seems to have taken his grandfather's position on Palestine and added to it his own frisson of anti-semitism. I thoroughly disagree with Mahatma Gandhi's pacifism, in the wake of the Holocaust, but at least he did not insult the victims of mass death. However, both Gandhis fall into the same pitfall of excusing the violence of the Palestinians while condemning the Jews or Israelis for using violence to gain their ends. It seems to me that for nonviolence really to have the moral force that is claimed for it, the same demand should be made to both sides - as, for example, Martin Luther King did in the United States.

Note (12-03-12): I will publish further comments on this post, but only if they refrain from excusing Nazism and the Holocaust, or from repeating the witless statement that most Jews in the world today are descendants of the Khazars. This blog does not give a platform to Nazis and antisemites.

Sullivan hearts Ron Paul

Well, it seems that Andrew Sullivan really has drunk the Kool-Aid when he says that he just doesn't believe Ron Paul "wrote those repulsive sentences himself." So then why did he allow them to be published year after year under his name? Why did he sign some of those newsletters? Why does he associate with Christian Reconstructionists? I think that Sullivan is allowing his misguided love for Ron Paul to get in the way of accepting the impressive evidence that Paul held (and still holds) repulsively racist, homophobic, and anti-semitic beliefs and hangs around those who also believe those things.

(Arun) Gandhi and the Jews

Apparently Arun Gandhi, the grandson of Mahatma Gandhi, doesn't understand Jews and the Jewish situation in the contemporary world any more than his grandfather did. Although in the case of Arun Gandhi, he's added a fair dose of anti-semitism. This is my fisking of Gandhi, in an "On Faith" posting on the Washington Post website - Jewish identity in the past.

Jewish identity in the past has been locked into the holocaust experience -- a German burden that the Jews have not been able to shed. It is a very good example of a community can overplay a historic experience to the point that it begins to repulse friends.

Unfortunately, it's a German burden that they placed upon the Jews - it's hard to get away from the murder of six million of your people. I don't believe in shaping Jewish identity around the Holocaust, because it means centering one's identity on death - but there's no way to avoid considering it in thinking about the modern Jewish experience. Here, he seems to be blaming the victim for focusing too much on what the victim has suffered. I'm sorry if that makes people uncomfortable who claim to be "friends" of Jews, but that's too bad for him.

The holocaust was the result of the warped mind of an individual who was able to influence his followers into doing something dreadful.

This is a misconception that I often find among my students - the idea that the Holocaust was the result of the pathologies of Adolf Hitler, as if one man could kill so many millions of people without help from others! It shows a profound ignorance of the historical causation of the Holocaust and how it actually occurred.

But, it seems to me the Jews today not only want the Germans to feel guilty but the whole world must regret what happened to the Jews. The world did feel sorry for the episode but when an individual or a nation refuses to forgive and move on the regret turns into anger.

Why should Jews forgive those who murdered their relatives and ancestors? That doesn't mean holding the post-war generation of Germans guilty of the sins of their parents and grandparents. One of the striking things about modern Germany is the degree to which the country has taken responsibility for the deeds of the Nazi regime and has attempted to make amends. The Israeli government is certainly cognizant of this, as are Jews who have come into contact with new generations of Germans.

Again, Gandhi here seems to be blaming the victim for the anger that "the world" feels because Jews have refused to forgive Germans. I don't think at all that contemporary anti-semitism is due to anger at Jews for refusing to forgive Germans - I think he should be looking instead at the survival of right-wing tendencies in many western nations, and the growth of Nazi-style anti-semitism in the Muslim world in the wake of the creation of the state of Israel. And I say Nazi-style because the Nazis are the source of this anti-semitism. Traditional Muslim anti-Jewish feeling has nothing to do (and has none of the deadly quality) of the anti-semitic ideas that have swept through the Muslim world.

The Jewish identity in the future appears bleak. Any nation that remains anchored to the past is unable to move ahead and, especially a nation that believes its survival can only be ensured by weapons and bombs. In Tel Aviv in 2004 I had the opportunity to speak to some Members of Parliament and Peace activists all of whom argued that the wall and the military build-up was necessary to protect the nation and the people. In other words, I asked, you believe that you can create a snake pit -- with many deadly snakes in it -- and expect to live in the pit secure and alive? What do you mean? they countered. Well, with your superior weapons and armaments and your attitude towards your neighbors would it not be right to say that you are creating a snake pit? How can anyone live peacefully in such an atmosphere? Would it not be better to befriend those who hate you? Can you not reach out and share your technological advancement with your neighbors and build a relationship?

Well, Gandhi is an heir to his grandfather's concepts of peace and nonviolent struggle, so it's not a surprise that he would be arguing against an Israeli military build-up. I agree that Israel should be trying much more to get along with its neighbors - opening up negotiations with the Syrians, for example, and engaging in honest negotation with the Palestinians that includes the willingness to dismantle most of the settlements in the West Bank - but that doesn't mean the Israeli government should refrain from military measures to protect its population as well.

Apparently, in the modern world, so determined to live by the bomb, this is an alien concept. You don't befriend anyone, you dominate them. We have created a culture of violence (and Israel and the Jews are the prime instigators) and that Culture of Violence is eventually going to destroy humanity.

This is the really anti-semitic part of his essay - the idea that "Israel and the Jews" are the prime instigators of the "culture of violence" in the world. Keeping close to the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, how about the gunmen of Hamas, Islamic Jihad, or the Al-Aksa Brigades who have blown up Israeli civilians - are they not contributors to the "culture of violence"? Or moving to South Asia - how about those in India and Pakistan who developed nuclear weapons for their countries, and the governments that have paid for those weapons and threaten each other with them? I can give many other examples, as I am sure anyone else is to - his obsession with "the Jews" is truly bizarre, and it is this obsession that has turned this struggler for nonviolence into an anti-semite.

Sderot Qassams

Steven Erlanger of the New York Times has finally reported on the Qassam rocket attacks on Sderot. (I usually disagree with those who criticize the NYTimes for being "pro-Palestinian," but I make an exception for Erlanger, who I think does generally favor the Palestinians over the Israelis). His report is quite good, although he does have the obligatory line about the "wretched" life of Palestinians in Gaza. He makes clear how much impact the fear of Qassams has had on those living in Sderot - especially on children. His story highlights why Israelis are so nervous about making concessions to the Palestinians (a point that seems to elude him, however).

Ron Paul takedown

James Kirchick of the New Republic has finally done the research in Ron Paul's newsletters to prove the point that his bigoted associations with neo-Nazis and racists reflect his own views - and have done so for many years. Read the whole article - this is one paragraph I paid particular attention to (on Jews):

The rhetoric when it came to Jews was little better. The newsletters display an obsession with Israel; no other country is mentioned more often in the editions I saw, or with more vitriol. A 1987 issue of Paul's Investment Letter called Israel "an aggressive, national socialist state," and a 1990 newsletter discussed the "tens of thousands of well-placed friends of Israel in all countries who are willing to wok [sic] for the Mossad in their area of expertise." Of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, a newsletter said, "Whether it was a setup by the Israeli Mossad, as a Jewish friend of mine suspects, or was truly a retaliation by the Islamic fundamentalists, matters little."

Kirchick has put onto the New Republic website the text of the Ron Paul newsletters that he quotes from, so it's possible for the reader to judge for herself whether Kirchick has read him correctly.

Ron Paul, Neo-Nazis, Racists, and Evolution

I've been following some of the blogosphere discussion about Ron Paul's connections to the American far right - among others, neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and Christian Reconstructionism (not to be confused with Jewish Reconstructionism!), as well as his anti-evolution and crank medicine views.

A few days ago LGF posted a photo of Paul together with Don Black and his son Derek Black ( Ron Paul's Photo-Op with Stormfront) - thanks to Deborah Lipstadt for the reference. Don Black is the owner of Stormfront, a neo-Nazi web site. Don Black has donated $500 to the Ron Paul campaign, and Paul is refusing to give it back.

On Paul's racist statements, see Ron Paul's racism. Paul has been a guest on the radio program of the Council of Conservative Citizens (what the White Citizens Councils turned into) - see The Company Ron Paul Keeps.

Another good blog article, which mentions his connection to Christian Reconstructionist Gary North, is Orcinus. For those who don't know who Gary North is, he's the son-in-law of R. J. Rushdoony, the founder of the movement. See this article by Walter Olson in Reason Magazine on Christian Reconstructionism - Invitation to a Stoning. Gary North was briefly on Paul's congressional staff in the 1970s.

Orac of Respectful Insolence has done a great job of laying out Paul's crank medical beliefs - Ron Paul, Quackery Enabler. Another of the ScienceBlogs crew has posted a video on Paul's rejection of evolution - Ron Paul Rejects Evolution.

What I want to know is why Ron Paul is still considered to have any legitimacy as a Presidential candidate? Why haven't all of these connections been pursued in stories about Paul on NPR, CNN or in the New York Times? Most of the stories I've read or heard about him have mentioned his opposition to the Iraq War, but haven't discussed who his most devoted supporters are, or even alluded to his adherence to the gold standard and opposition to the Federal Reserve Bank - a standard of far-right wing rhetoric. Is it because they simply don't take him seriously? He doesn't have a chance of becoming the next President of the United States - but that doesn't mean that we should ignore his connections to the far right wing.

Photos of Sunnier Days

Since I'm feeling melancholy about the short days, I thought I'd post some nice photos of sunnier days. The first two are of Sodom Pond in Adamant, Vermont - I visited there in late summer this year.

Trees on Sodom Pond

Water lilies on Sodom Pond

This next one is from the fall, going home from Vermont - Lake Champlain.

Lake Champlain

The next one is from Israel - just along the Israel-Lebanon border.

Rekhes ha-Sulam

This one is from the women's section of the Kotel, in Jerusalem.

Praying on a hot day

The last rose blossom of the fall in my garden.

Yellow Rose of Ithaca

End of the Year

Just some thoughts on the ending of the (secular) year.

I was just walking to my local coffee shop (Gimme!) and thinking about how the end of the secular year feels different than the end of the Jewish year. The secular year (at least for those of us in the Northern Hemisphere) ends in darkness - the days are so short that (here in Ithaca) the sun rises around 7:30 a.m. and sets around 4:30 p.m. Daylight feels like a rare treasure - and an even rarer treasure is a sunny day (Ithaca is in one of the cloudiest regions of the U.S.) Since this is a college town, Ithaca empties out during the break between semesters. My street has a couple of houses occupied by students or recent graduates, and they have disappeared for the vacation. Even the other people have gone away for a few days. On Christmas Day there were hardly any cars on the street. Ithaca was very quiet - hardly any cars passed along the street during the day (which I mostly spent grading exams....) It feels like a melancholy time.

Only if I go to Israel at this time does it feel that I can escape from this melancholy. The days are slightly longer, and there isn't the enormous focus on Christmas that pulls in all the energy in the U.S. And even New Year's Eve isn't a big deal - especially in Jerusalem, where the rabbinate threatens hotels who want to have New Year's parties. They say that they'll pull their kashrut certificates if they observe "Yom Sylvester," which is the Israeli name for the secular New Year (named, according to this Wikipedia article, after Pope Sylvester I, who died in 335 on December 31). I think in the years that I've been in Israel at this time I've only gone to one or two Sylvester parties.

The Jewish New Year, on the other hand, doesn't have the same melancholy associations. The days are getting shorter, but they're still pretty long in Ithaca. Everything's still growing, the flowers are in bloom, and there's lots of good local vegetables in the Farmer's Market. The school year is beginning, so everyone's still hopeful that they're going to get good grades this year. The end of the old year is the month of Elul, which isn't a month to look back over the previous year, but a month to prepare for Rosh Hashanah. One does engage in introspection to prepare for Yom Kippur, which can involve a melancholy focus on one's shortcomings and outright sins against other people - but after Yom Kippur comes Sukkot, which is an unalloyed happy holiday. And in Israel, it often means adorning the sukkah with garish decorations that most Israelis don't realize were actually intended to be Christmas decorations.

So all in all, I prefer Rosh Hashanah to the secular New Year. But on the other hand, we've now started the long process of lengthening the days - it's much too subtle to realize now, but by February the days are palpably longer. (And we need that, since by February we are very tired of winter, and there are still a couple more months of it).

John Strugnell Dies at 77

I just found this out by reading Paleojudaica: John Strugnell Dies at 77; Scholar Undone by His Slur. I studied with Strugnell when I was an undergraduate and a graduate student at Harvard in the 1980s. I took his course on "Intertestamental Literature" when I was a senior, and we spent most of the semester reading 1 Enoch (in the then new Old Testament Pseudepigrapha translation). I wrote a paper for the course on the Apocalypse of Abraham - it was one of the first papers I wrote as a student on ancient Jewish mysticism. As a graduate student, I took the New Testament seminar with him in 1986 or 1987 when the topic was 4QMiqtzat Ma'aseh Torah. It hadn't been published yet - in fact, we were very lucky to be able to study it, as Strugnell was the Dead Sea Scrolls editor who had been entrusted with its publication, and this was still in the days before all of the scrolls were released to be studied by any scholar. I remember going to the AAR/SBL that year and getting into a conversation at breakfast one day with a scholar from another university who asked me if I had a copy of Strugnell's transcription, because he wanted to look at it! When I went to Israel in 1987 for two years, I would periodically go visit Strugnell at the Ecole Biblique and we would talk about ancient Judaism. I wasn't aware of his negative opinions about Judaism until the whole scandal broke in 1990. At some point during these years I was talking to him in his Harvard office and agreed with him that the most interesting parts of ancient Jewish literature were the wierd ones, like the pseudepigrapha or the mystical texts. He was always very helpful to me and I was sad when I heard about his opinions on Judaism. Nonetheless, he had many accomplishments as a scholar, including teaching many undergraduate and graduate students how to read ancient Jewish texts in a careful and analytic manner. Whatever his feelings about Judaism as a religion, it did not affect how he related to me as a Jewish student or how he taught me about ancient Judaism.

Update - This is Jim Davila's encomium of Strugnell, with which I agree - John Strugnell. He says that "many of his friends and students, myself included, signed a statement in his defense which was published in Biblical Archaeology Review in 1991." I also signed this statement.

The "Red One" and Hanukkah

Last night in shul, instead of singing Adon Olam at the end, we sang a couple of stanzas of Maoz Tzur - the first and the last, both of which refer to the Hanukkah story. But in my Birnbaum siddur (Orthodox) there is a fifth stanza (which Birnbaum unhelpfully does not translate, but says that it is later than the rest of the piyyut). I took a look at it tonight trying to figure out what it said. Here's a rough translation:

Reveal your holy arm and bring near the day of salvation.
Enact the revenge of your servants against the evil kingdom.
The time has lengthened, and there is no end to the evil days.
Destroy the red one (Admon) in the deepest shadow,
and establish for us the seven shepherds [Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Aaron, Joseph, and David]

The "red one" is a pun on the name Edom (the ancient kingdom, which in rabbinic interpretation referred first to the pagan Roman empire, then to the Christian Roman empire, and then to Christianity as a whole).

(Translation help from the Orthodox Union website - Maoz Tzur).

Useful information on this stanza from Dov Bear A question for my conservative friends. He sees an analogy between the Hellenists denounced in the fourth stanza and modern-day right wing Jews who are trying to get close to evangelical Christians because of their common stance on various social issues like homosexuality or abortion. He said last year:

In 2006 we have our own Hellenizers, men like Daniel Lapin who rejoice at finding common ground between Judaism and the most backwards and least tolerant of Christians. Unfortunately, this common ground is almost always achieved by diluting Judaism. Our positions on abortion or homosexuality or any of the moral issues that animate appeasers like Lapin are richer and more complex and more ambiguous than the Evangelical's absolute 'No.' As readers of the Rabbis are aware our thinking on evolution and the age of the universe is also more accomodating than Christianity's. Samson Rephael Hirsch, for example, was famously flexible about evolution. And the Tiferes Yisroel thought Adam's children married pre-Adamic 'men.'

I just took another look at Lapin's website and found some truly mind-boggling statements by him. Here's one (from the "Ask Rabbi Daniel Lapin" section):

I belong to a messianic congregation and we're learning and following our Jewish roots. There are a few Jews in our congregation, and we often have a Rabbi come to speak. We asked those who were Jewish what [ed. behaviors] they felt Christians do that is most offensive to Jews. The response was the [use of the] symbol of the cross and/or wearing a cross. I wear both a Star of David and a Cross. I never thought I was offending my Jewish brethren. Is not the cross the ‘tav’ in the Hebrew language? Is the cross really offensive? I won't wear my cross if I'm offending my Jewish brethren. Should I get rid of my cross?

The only Jews who might be offended by a cross are those whose Jewish identity is so rootless that their definition of being a Jew is someone who doesn't believe in Jesus or the cross. There is obviously a whole lot more about Judaism and what we DO believe rather than what we are NOT. Many Jews without a strong Jewish foundation in Torah knowledge react to a cross the way a vampire does (or so I'm told) . There is no letter in the Hebrew language that resembles a cross. Sometimes when people say I offended them, it doesn't mean I was really offensive it just means that their skin is too thin. Best wishes RDL

This is a remarkably unhistorical answer to give this undoubtedly well-meaning questioner. Historically speaking, Jews have been wary of the sight of the cross because of Christian Judeophobia. It doesn't have anything to do with whether one's Jewish identity is rootless. In fact, the Jews I've met who are the most wary of Christianity have been Orthodox Jews who won't even enter a church - and these are people who are very well-rooted in Judaism. The thing I don't understand about Lapin is why he works so hard to curry favor with evangelical Christianity (not just evangelical Christians as people he agrees with). It seems to me that it would be sufficient to say that he agrees with them on social issues and that he's willing to be in coalitions with them. It's not necessary then to deny the history of Christian anti-Judaism and claim that Jews who are still aware of it are somehow unJewish.

Mitt Romney and Shatnez

I was just listening to Mitt Romney speaking on NPR (they interviewed him for tonight’s All Things Considered) and he said that he believed that the Bible was the word of God and that his goal was to obey all the commandments. [Why this is relevant to the presidential election is a whole other issue, but let’s take his statements at face value, because the NPR questioner was following up on a question in the most recent Republican debate where the candidates were asked their views on the Bible]. All I could think was – all the commandments? The prohibition of wearing garments made of linen and wool together? The laws of kashrut, including the prohibition of eating pork or shellfish? The commandment to let your fields lie fallow every seven years? The observance of the Sabbath, including the prohibition on kindling fire on the Sabbath? Paying your hired laborer every evening after his or her work is done? Circumcising all your male children on the eighth day after birth?

Somehow, I doubt that he really intended all of these commandments when he said that his goal was to obey them all. I suspect he doesn’t even know about the law of shatnez, and doesn’t particularly worry about whether he eats pork rinds. As a Jew, it drives me crazy when Christians (and in this case he qualifies as a Mormon) say that they believe the entire Bible is the word of God and must be obeyed, since they so definitely don’t obey all of the laws of the Hebrew Bible. Why not just say that? It’s actually part of basic Christian doctrine from the New Testament onward that the ritual commandments don’t apply to Christians. This is what Paul was so exercised about in Galatians. In order for Gentiles to become Christians they did not need to become circumcised or to keep kosher – what they needed was faith in Christ.

And why did he say this in the first place? Especially since he is a Mormon and has other holy scriptures that he follows – the Book of Mormon, another book called the Pearl of Great Price, and perhaps others that I don’t know about. I’ve been reading recently that Mormon doctrine holds that the Bible actually has errors in it – which would mean that in fact he wouldn’t believe that the entire Bible is the word of God. Humans introduced errors into it. Why doesn’t he say that?

I know, it’s obvious why he doesn’t say these things – he’s pandering to the religious right base of the Republican Party. And it’s that religious right that makes it necessary for the presidential candidates to engage in these stupid discussions about what they think about the Bible. I don’t care what they think about the Bible. I care about the policies they would put into practice – what do they think about health care? Iraq? Global warming? Poverty? The rebuilding of New Orleans? The Middle East peace process? Women’s rights? Yes, real issues that are the president’s business.

When the NPR questioner got down to the nitty gritty and asked Romney whether he thought the world was created in six days as it says in Genesis, he backed up and said that with all of the serious problems facing the U.S. and the world, there really wasn’t any point in discussing what portions of the Bible were from God and what they meant. He implied that it was the NPR questioner who had suddenly thought up this question to trip him up – when actually it’s his own party that has gotten itself so entangled in religion that such questions even come up in a presidential debate.

I’m looking forward to hearing what Romney will have to say on the question of faith on Thursday night when he gives his big speech – JFK redux. Except, of course, that he won’t be able to say all the great things that Kennedy said about the separation of church and state, because if he does, he will have lost the religious right of his party, which is necessary for his nomination. Nor will he be able to speak honestly about his own Mormonism, for the same reason, since he needs to blur the differences between Mormonism and evangelical Christianity in order to have any chance of getting a significant percentage of the evangelical vote.

Hate Crime Victims - Jews & Muslims

The FBI has put up on its website all of the Hate Crime Statistics reports since 1996. I took a look at all of them for the purpose of comparing the hate crimes reported against Jews and Muslims over that time period, and discovered that there is a big change in the number of crimes against Muslims in 2001 - which is no surprise. I assume that most of them were committed after the 9/11/01 attacks. The level of hate crimes against Muslims drops in subsequent years, but remains higher than the pre-2001 rate.

Because I can't figure out how to put a table into this posting, I'll give the statistics this way:

For the entire period of 1996-2006, the average number of crimes against persons (Jews) was 408, with the highest year being 2002 (485). The largest number by far of such crimes were intimidation, followed by simple assault and then aggravated assault.

For this same period, the average number of crimes against property (Jewish) was 684, with the highest being 775 in 1996. The largest number by far of such crimes were damage/destruction/vandalism.

For Muslims over the same period, I've broken it down into pre-2001 and post-2001 periods. Pre-2001, the average number of crimes against persons (Muslims) was 19. Against Muslim property it was 11.4.

Post-2001, the average number of crimes against persons (Muslims) was 153, with the highest year being 2001, with 389. Of those, 296 were intimidation, 27 were aggravated assault, and 66 were simple assault. Post 2001, the average number of crimes against property (Muslim) was 79, with the highest figure also being in 2001, with 155.

From a comparison of these statistics we can see that in all of these years, numbers of property crimes against Jews exceeded crimes against persons (Jews) by 63% to 37%. For Muslims pre-2001, the ratio was the opposite: property crime was 37%, crimes against persons was 63%. Post-2001 the ratio is almost the same: 66% against persons, 34% against property.

More on hate crime statistics

Arash Kamangir has some good questions on his blog about the latest FBI statistics. He pointed out that to make a true comparison between anti-Jewish and anti-Muslim hate crimes, we would have to scale the results by population.

Wikipedia provides a useful survey of population estimates for American Jews, ranging from about 6.4 to 7.4 million according to the latest surveys.

It is harder to figure out how many American Muslims there are. One estimate, which I found on the "Islam 101" website estimates that as of 1991 there were between 5 and 8 million Muslims in the U.S.

The Religious Tolerance website provides estimates from several surveys. The numbers range from about 1.6 million to 12 million. The first four estimates, which are based on survey research, range up to a high of 2 million - as of 2000/2001.

An interesting article by Jane I. Smith on the U.S. State Department website gives estimates of from 2 million to 7 million. Smith is a well-respected scholar of Islamic studies who teaches at Hartford Seminary in Hartford, Connecticut. She remarks:

It is very difficult to estimate the precise number of Muslims currently living in the United States. Muslims tend to put the number somewhat higher than non-Muslim scholars and demographers; the estimated figures range widely - from around two million in one study to as many as seven million. There are several reasons for the varying estimates. First, because the U.S. Constitution mandates a separation of church and state that is reflected in American law, U.S. Census Bureau survey forms do not ask recipients about their religion. Neither does the U.S. Immigration Service collect information on the religion of immigrants. Many mosques in the United States do not have formal membership policies, and they seldom keep accurate attendance figures. In the words of University of Chicago religion scholar Martin Marty, "Counting noses has come to depend on two sources. One source is poll-takers calling during the dinner hour to ask, `What is your religious preference?' The other source is religious leaders, on both the local and the national scene. People who respond to telephone interviewers may have all kinds of motives for declaring themselves as part of this or that group, or no group at all. And people who report on the size of their congregations, denominations, and cohorts also have a variety of motives." The end result is that there is no official count of Muslims in the United States nor is there a number that is commonly accepted by all who have studied the question.

When I originally wrote, I had the higher estimates of Muslim population in the U.S. in mind - about 6 million in fact - so I thought that the comparative figures for Jews and Muslims victimized by hate crimes were roughly proportional by population, thus meaning that Jews were victimized more by hate crimes than Muslims. However, if we compare the lower estimates of Jewish population (6.4 million) with the lower estimate of Muslim population (2 million), then we get a different picture, as Arash points out.

And the hate crime statistics are not the only way to measure prejudice. Another way is to measure whether people would vote for a person of a particular religion. In a 2006 poll done by Rasmussen Reports, 61% of likely voters said that they would not vote for a Muslim candidate. 43% said that they would not vote for a Mormon candidate. 60% said they would not vote for an atheist. Unfortunately, this poll didn't ask about Jewish candidates.

The latest ADL poll on anti-semitic attitudes shows that 15% of the American population holds strongly anti-semitic beliefs. A 1999 Gallup poll reported that only 6% would refuse to vote for a Jewish candidate for President.

2006 Hate Crime Statistics

The FBI has released the report on 2006 Hate Crime Statistics, and it is very interesting to examine those hate crimes based on the religious identity of the victim. Of the 9080 hate crimes, 1597 were motivated by religion, and of those 1027 were anti-Jewish (64% of crimes based on religion of victim; 11% of total hate crimes). 191 were anti-Muslim (11%; 2% of total hate crimes).

Specific crimes against persons:

aggravated assault
anti-Jewish: 22
anti-Muslim: 24

simple assault
anti-Jewish: 58
anti-Muslim: 30

intimidation
anti-Jewish: 244
anti-Muslim: 79

Specific crimes against property:

robbery
anti-Jewish: 1
anti-Muslim: 1

larceny-theft
anti-Jewish: 13
anti-Muslim: 0

destruction/damage/vandalism
anti-Jewish: 672
anti-Muslim: 51

Thus, in the most serious category of crimes against persons (aggravated assault), the number of anti-Jewish and anti-Muslim offenses is almost identical, but in all other categories, especially intimidation and destruction/damage/vandalism, the number of incidents directed against Jews is far larger. It strikes me that these figures belie the claim that Islamophobia is a much greater danger than anti-semitism in the United States. If that were true, it would mean that far more Muslims than Jews would be victims of hate crimes.

Of all groups in the American population, blacks are the group with the highest number of hate crimes against them: 3136 (34%), then whites (1008; 11%), then Jews (11%), then gay men (881; 10%), and then Hispanics (770; 8%). From these statistics, we can see that the hatreds rampant in the United States are really the old tried and true ones - anti-black racism, anti-semitism, homophobia, and anti-immigrant sentiments.

Update:

I was just looking again at the FBI statistics - they are by no means complete, because some cities and states have no reporting of hate crimes. Look, for example, at the state of Alabama. There is only one hate crime reported for the entire state for 2006. For comparison, compare the reporting for New Jersey: a total of 759 hate crimes. There are no statistics whatsoever for Mississippi, for another example. According to the FBI website, however, the agencies reporting on hate crimes in their jurisdictions represent 85% of the U.S. population (255 million people).

Jerusalem on Google Earth

Some more Google Earth images. The first one is of the neighborhood I've lived in Jerusalem - Emek Refaim. The second is of the Old City - you can see the Temple Mount and the Dome of the Rock on the right hand side of the photo.