Olmert's Cancer and the Propriety of Linking Punishment With Sin

As reported on Hirhurim, Rav Shlomo Aviner said that one may not state that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert developed cancer because of his present or future policies regarding Jerusalem, the settlements etc.

He said that man does not know the reasons of the Almighty and that, after all, everyone knows that bad things happen to good people and vice versa.

Furthermore, he said, by blaming Olmert's illness on his policies one is committing the sin of distressing a fellow human being.

Finally, he recognizes that the motivation of linking Olmert's illness to his policies may be noble, for it may inspire people to repent for their own misdeeds. However, he makes the astonishing claim (forgive my language) that "this generation will not repent out of fear. This generation will only repent out of love. This is all explained by our Master, Rav Kook...."

I have a hard time knowing where to begin.

Identifying sin where one sees punishment is so basic to Judaism that I find it difficult seeing people pretend that doing so is wicked. The Ohr HaChayim famously said that the Jews of Spain were expelled in 1492 because they devoted too much time to the study of secular philosophy. During the Holocaust, many rabbis wrote letters in which they prefaced their description of current events with the phrase "ba'avonoseinu harabim -- because of our many sins."

Many are the stories kids read growing up of the evil person who raises his hand to strike a tzaddik only to to discover his hand paralyzed in mid-air. Are we to suppose that his paralysis is unrelated to his sin of raising a hand to a holy man? Are we supposed to make no inference one way or the other?

Yes, bad things happen to good people, but that is a question (and an exception), not the rule.

Making a personal declaration to an ordinary person that he or she is suffering because of this or that sin seems cruel. However, Olmert is not an ordinary person; he is the prime minister of Israel, representing the Jewish nation to the whole world. Surely different rules apply.

Rav Aviner's final assertion that people only repent out of love is staggering. Does he not know a whole array of people who repent for all sorts of reasons? Rebuke worked for thousands of years but mysteriously works no longer? Every mussar shmuess worthless? God's tochacha (in Leviticus and Deuteronomy) no longer effective?

I do not know whether Olmert developed cancer because of his policies. The issue doesn't terribly interest me.

I do know, however, that tampering with Yerushalayim is playing with fire, and that letting portions of God's mountain (Har HaBayis) be destroyed by Muslim bulldozers probably does not ingratiate one with God either.

I also know that, Olmert aside, seeing God's hand in current events is straight, traditional Judaism. If people wish to move away from this tradition, let them at least first acknowledge it. Don't pretend it doesn't exist.

ISRABLUFF: 5 Unanswered Questions

Republican Presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani suffered from a far more serious case of prostate cancer, which required a long surgery and targeted radiation process, than what doctors revealed about Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's prostate problem. Recognizing an opportunity to create a sympathetic "ratings bounce" for their beleaguered colleague, PM Olmert's spinmeisters decided to invite the entire media infratructure to the "apolitical" press conference, including Israeli and foreign media reps. While no one is inclined to make fun of PM Olmert's burgeoning health problem (including this blogger), many Israeli commentators openly chided the timing of the announcement and the ramifications surrounding the shotgun press conference.

There are at least "5 Unanswered Questions" surrounding the orchestrated media event:

1-Did PM Olmert's staff get their hands on a transcript of a potentially politically fatal report about the various investigations into Olmert's allegedy shady dealings that was supposed to air on a top-rated TV newsmagazine this week? Less than a few days after the first TV promos about the story were announced, the "prostate cancer" press conference was quickly announced. End result-the TV report was "temporarily" put on the back burner out of a "human concern" for Olmert's health.

2-If Olmert's prostate problem warranted a full blown press conference which resulted in emotional sympathetic calls from Giuliani and President Bush, why did Olmert and his doctors say there was no rush to perform surgery until after the Annapolis peace conference? Secretary of State Rice has yet to announce a formal date for the conference, which could be pushed back till December or January or never.

3-Could it be that the health problem was used as a lever to distract the Israeli public and the media away from the fact that Olmert's political fate might have been sealed by both the on-going investigations and the fact that Annapolis is destined for failure?

4-Is Olmert's staff using the health issue to prepare the Israeli public and the world for a blitzkrieg against the growing Hamas threat in Gaza? According to all news reports earlier this week, the "prostate press conference" resulted in Olmert's highest rating approval since the eve of the 2nd war in Lebanon (summer 2006)?

5-Last but not least, how is the Israeli public allowing itself to once again be manipulated by the country's shrewdest politician?

Remembering Bibi's Inglorious Sendoff

Photo: Front page of Israeli daily Maariv the morning after Netanyahu was trounced in his bid for reelection. Headline in Hebrew reads: BARAK -- A New Era.

For not the first time in his political career, Benjamin Netanyahu has become Israel’s Great Right Hope – a figure looked to with increasing longing by an electorate fed up with the blunders and corruption of the Olmert government.

But it was less than a decade ago that Netanyahu, after a scandal-marred and profoundly underwhelming term as prime minister, was soundly defeated for reelection by Labor’s Ehud Barak. In the weeks following his ouster, Netanyahu took quite a beating in the media – a state of affairs to which he ordinarily would have been accustomed, if not for the fact that those now throwing some of the hardest punches included many of his former political and ideological allies.

About Netanyahu it could plausibly be argued that, with the possible exception of Richard Nixon during the climactic months of the Watergate drama and George W. Bush as this is being written, there has never been a democratically elected head of state, certainly none in recent memory, so universally vilified (by friend and foe alike) in his waning time in office.

Indeed, so thoroughly had Netanyahu offended or insulted or disappointed almost everyone within his own party and natural base of support – from Yitzhak Shamir to Benny Begin to Natan Sharansky to Yitzhak Mordechai to others too numerous to mention – that when the time came to concede defeat on election night, he was virtually alone on stage with his wife and his political mentor, Moshe Arens.

The revulsion felt in Israel toward Netanyahu extended from columnists on the Left to their colleagues in the middle and on the Right, and the sentiment was very much shared by their counterparts in the U.S.

Few of the analysts who set about pondering Bibi’s fate in American journals of opinion – even those publications that in the past had been generally sympathetic to Netanyahu – shed tears for the man who, in the words of Adam J. Levitan in The Weekly Standard, “ensured the disintegration of the Israeli right” by his embrace of the Oslo peace process.

By far the most devastating attack on what remained at the time of Netanyahu’s reputation came from the Middle East analyst Daniel Pipes, whose article in the July 5, 1999 issue of The New Republic, “The Road to Damascus,” made a convincing case that Netanyahu, as first reported in Haaretz a month earlier, had been prepared to make concessions to Syria that were considerably greater than anything ever contemplated by either of his immediate, supposedly more dovish predecessors, Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres.

Pipes began his piece with a dramatic exchange from a debate the previous April between Netanyahu and his former defense minister, Yitzhak Mordechai, who was then running against his ex-boss:

“In a discussion of Syria, Netanyahu declared that he would not ‘give [Syrian President Hafez] Assad what Barak is willing to give Assad.’ Mordechai stunned the Israeli electorate with his dramatic reply. He coldly dared Netanyahu to repeat his claim. ‘Look me in the eye, Bibi ... look me in the eye,’ he demanded. Netanyahu did not repeat his statement.”

With information gleaned “from several sources with first-hand knowledge of the talks,” Pipes alleged that in 1998 Netanyahu, coming off a series of mishaps and intent on bolstering his sagging image, began indirect negotiations with Assad through a series of secret meetings between some prominent American go-betweens and the Syrian leader – and that Netanyahu, desperate for a breakthrough, gave in on demand after demand until in the end his capitulation was total: “Israel,” Pipes wrote, “would...return to the 1967 lines.”

But the deal was not to be, because Mordechai, and later Foreign Minister Ariel Sharon, refused to endorse it. As Mordechai would taunt Netanyahu in the aforementioned debate, “More than once...I acted as a responsible defense minister of this country and prevented what had to be prevented. You know things would have looked very different otherwise.”

Netanyahu’s camp vigorously denied the story, but Pipes was not impressed. “Anyone who has followed Netanyahu’s career,” he wrote, “will instantly recognize in this episode the man’s well-established pattern of speaking loudly but carrying a small stick.... [He] gave more to the Syrians than did either [Rabin or Peres]. And, judging by new reports coming out of Israel, he also gave away more than Barak would.”

Pipes was wrong about Barak, who as prime minister would prove willing to give away a lot more than Netanyahu ever envisioned. But the depths to which Netanyahu had sunk in the estimation of his erstwhile supporters bears keeping in mind as he continues his political comeback.

This Week @ www.jewishpress.com

"Now if the Farm Lobby is so powerful, why is the press so devoid of any discussion of it? There are no books by ex-presidents denouncing the excessive powers of the Farm Lobby. Ostensibly respectable professors at Harvard and the University of Chicago do not churn out books and articles demonizing farmers for their lobbying efforts." - Steven Plaut on the Lie of the Anti-Lobby.

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"Indeed, organizations sometimes obstruct and sabotage their own heroes. Such collective bodies do not intervene even when it might be in their national or organizational interest to do so. What they do instead is stand down, slander, or showcase the hero in an exploitative way – and then rush to take credit when the hero crosses the finish line at the end of a long, hard race. " - Phyllis Chesler on the man who stood up for truth.
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"Sadly, early opportunities to bring Ethiopia’s Jews home to Israel were squandered. Lenhoff reports that in the 1950’s, Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie agreed to a proposal by Norman Bentwich to permit Jewish emigration for $50 per person. One cannot help but recall the Romanian government’s offer, in 1943, to let its 70,000 Jews leave in exchange for $50 per person in transportation costs – an offer dismissed by Jewish leaders and sabotaged by Allied officials who did not want to be burdened with Jewish refugees. The Bentwich-Selassie plan likewise collapsed, but for a different reason: the Israeli government was not interested." - Dr. Rafael Medoff on the Inside Story.
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"There may be no kosher restaurants, but Savannah does have an abundance of heart. Call it hachnachus orchim or call it southern hospitality, either way the people of Savannah are as warm, friendly and giving as any Jewish community across the globe. Their accents exude an inviting sense of calm. Smiles are abundant and sincere, and it’s easy for visitors to get sucked in to the sweetness of Savannah." Join Yoni Glatt for a visit to Savannah.

And the double standard in academia, Lancut, and Looking Forward in pictures.

Finally, exclusively in our print edition (available at newsstands or by calling 718-992-1600 ext. 344) Points for Education, Singing for Israel, and Leave them Laughing.

Happy Reading!

Excerpts From My Zeyv Interview

The following are excerpts from an interview I conducted with Sender Zeyv, author of Every Man A Slave, Aleph Shin, and the upcoming Ten Lost, which did not appear in the print version of The Jewish Press for lack of space.

What would your response be to those who find too much violence in your books?

You know I try to write a little bit realistically. When you’re talking about war, there’s violence. Wars have violence, that’s the metzios. If you want to talk about a war and not mention anything about violence, it's not a war. War is hell, what could I tell you. I'm not trying to sugar coat. I do a little bit, I took out some of the violence. [The version of Ten Lost] that you read has much less violence than the original version. [Zeyv had sent me an unfinished version of the book -- E.R.]

Why don’t other rabbis write works of Jewish fiction? Do you think they should?

They do write them but they write them under pseudonyms like I did. They don’t really want people to know who they are. There are talmidei chachamim in Israel and in America who have written novels that I know of. I’m not going to tell you who they are.

[During our conversation in relation to Every Man A Slave, Zeyv spoke about Jesse Jackson.]

Jesse Jackson was from my neighborhood in Chicago. He built this army of arrogant and defiant people who just wanted to get back at “whitey” instead of taking advantage and trying to become part of the American dream. The first thing that I remember him doing was lead protests in front of white- and usually Jewish-owned businesses that served black neighborhoods.

Now these stores hired mostly blacks, catered to black tastes, and did not rip them off. But Jesse Jackson said they have to be black owned and encouraged people not to buy from them.

That was the beginning of his career as a race hustler. And that is the kind of leadership that the blacks have. Whenever they have a promising leader who could really do something for them, the Jesse Jacksons of the world call them Uncle Tom and destroy their reputation in the eyes of the greater black community.

The Doubter Dilemma

All Orthodox Jews believe that a Jew's sole path to God is through Judaism. A Jew may not become a Christian or a Buddhist, even if his heart pines to do so.

Suppose, however, that a Christian approaches you and admits he has recently stopped attending church regularly; doubts have been plaguing him. What should a religious Jew's reaction be?

A Jew surely has no desire to convince the doubting Christian that his savior had no physical father or that he died for humanity's sins. Indeed, the image of a Jew arguing for the veracity of Christianity is amusing or perhaps absurd.

Yet to let the gentleman lapse into atheism presents a risk as well.

Yes, atheists can be extremely moral and "religious" people can be extremely immoral. Yet, to make a gross generalization, those who support gay marriage, partial-birth abortion, moral relativism, blame-free psychology, promiscuous premarital behavior, and a whole slew of other ills tend not to be believing Christians, or believers of any of the major faiths, for that matter.

I once posed this dilemma to a knowledgeable rabbi of mine. He too acknowledged the quandary, without giving me a clear answer.

One solution is to discuss those elements of religion that Judaism shares with the religion of the individual with whom one is talking. One can discuss God's existence, His caring for His creatures, and His moral expectations of mankind.

This approach only works so far, however. If a Christian doubter rejects certain ideas regarding his savior, he may eventually reject the entire package and turn to agnosticism or atheism.

While he may search for another religion, this scenario is unlikely (though if he expresses a fascination for Judaism, one can make the argument that one should encourage him to convert -- but this too is debatable).

In short, one's options when crossing paths with a doubter do not appear to be happy ones.

Presidential Anti-Semitism

Partners in Pinsk, or is it Minsk, or is it Dvinsk?



The president of Belarus blamed Jews for turning a town into a "pigsty". "This was founded as a Jewish city and you know how Jews treat the place they live in," Al Lukashenko said, referring to the Belarusian city of Bobruisk. "Look at Israel, I have been there. They don't take much care of it," he said. Lukashenko is like a figure out of a Borat-sequel movie. In the photo you can see him teaching the Jews the hygienic civilized way of picking one's nose.

You realize what this means? The president of Belarus is almost as anti-Semitic as the ex-President of the United States, Jimmy Carter!

Television and The Holocaust

Photo: Rod Serling, famed television playwright and creator of "The Twilight Zone,"
addressed the Holocaust in a number of the show's episodes.

Television has long been the nation’s predominant shaper of public opinion, the supreme arbiter of tastes and trends, the ultimate barometer of what’s popular and what’s not.

And if the effects of television have been negative far more often than positive, there is still something to be said for a medium that has educated Americans about other cultures; acquainted them with previously unfamiliar ethnic groups and religious beliefs; and made them a far more tolerant and open-minded people than they were just forty or fifty years ago.

In his compelling book While America Watches: Television and the Holocaust (Oxford University Press, 1999), Jeffrey Shandler demonstrates how television over the years brought Holocaust awareness into tens of millions of homes and, presumably, even larger numbers of hearts and minds.

Shandler argues that “Since its earliest years, television has played a formative role in establishing the Holocaust as a recognizable event for American audiences.”

That of course contradicts the popular perception that the Holocaust received short shrift in the mainstream popular culture of the late 1940’s and 1950’s. But Shandler makes the case that early “efforts were...made to present this then-unnamed subject to the general American public” via “several dozen documentaries, news reports, dramas, and other kinds of programming aired on television.”

Shandler acknowledges that in the years immediately following the war, the Nazis’ systematic assault on Jews was not yet understood as a singularly distinct historical phenomenon.

In the first television presentations on the subject of wartime atrocities, writes Shandler, “Jews were not singled out as the quintessential victims of Nazi persecution, nor were Jewish responses regarded as central to the postwar understanding of this chapter of history. Moreover, the Holocaust had not yet been distinguished as an event of ultimate or paradigmatic stature, against which other moral issues might be measured.”

So there was, to be sure, an evolution of sorts in how the subject was presented, as the tendency early on was lump the all-out effort to annihilate European Jewry together with Nazi atrocities against other civilian populations.

That tendency, hardly unique to television, was corrected rather quickly: By the mid-1950’s the uniqueness of the Nazis’ anti-Jewish racial obsession was regularly at the forefront of Holocaust-related programming, particularly in the ubiquitous made-for-TV plays of the time.

Some of the earliest Holocaust-related programs centered on the ordeal of displaced persons, a subject that was discussed rather frequently on locally produced public-affairs and news shows between 1948 and 1952. (Shandler singles out New York independent station WPIX – Channel 11 – for its extensive coverage of the issue.)

One of the first nationally broadcast series to feature a real-life Jewish survivor was NBC’s immensely popular “This Is Your Life,” which on May 27, 1953 featured the story of Hanna Bloch Kohner, who as a young woman had been incarcerated in several concentration camps and was now the wife of a Hollywood talent agent.

Drama anthologies and original plays were an important part of 1950’s-era television, and towering talents like Paddy Chayefsky and Reginald Rose were not averse to using the Holocaust as backdrop or theme on programs like “Philco Television Playhouse,” “The U.S. Steel Hour” and “Playhouse 90.”

A television pioneer meriting special mention is Rod Serling, the celebrated 1950’s TV playwright who went on to create the groundbreaking 1960’s series “The Twilight Zone.” A Jew who was ambivalent about his Jewishness until the day he died, Serling nevertheless authored some memorable Holocaust-inspired stories for television, among them a 1960 dramatization of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising entitled “In the Presence of Mine Enemies.”

Serling also penned several “Twilight Zone” episodes that took the Holocaust as its theme, including 1963’s “He’s Alive” – the “he” being Hitler, or Hitler’s spirit, which Serling, in his closing narration, cast in universalistic terms:

"Where will he go next, this phantom from another time...? ... Anyplace – every place – where there’s hate, where there’s prejudice, where there’s bigotry. He’s alive...so long as these evils exist. Remember that when he comes to your town. Remember it when you hear his voice speaking out through others. Remember it when you hear a name called, a minority attacked.... He’s alive because, through these things, we keep him alive."

Shandler points to two television events as “major watersheds” in the history of television’s treatment of the Holocaust: the Eichmann trial in 1961 and the miniseries “Holocaust” in 1978.

Not that the intervening period was exactly a wasteland; quite the contrary, writes Shandler:

“The seventeen years between these two events produced no single broadcast to rival their impact, but from 1961 to 1978 the Holocaust appeared with increasing frequency on American television in documentaries, dramas, even science fiction and comedy programs.

“These telecasts played a crucial role in establishing the Holocaust as a regular presence in American public culture. In particular, the occasional appearance of the Holocaust on episodic programs – dramatic series about lawyers, detectives, newspaper reporters, or space travelers – helped establish this subject in the nation’s popular repertoire of moral concerns.”

The trial in Israel of Adolf Eichmann in the spring and summer of 1961 was filmed, thanks to an exclusive arrangement with the Israeli government, by Capital Cities Broadcasting Corp. (at the time a small New York-based operation which later would become a media powerhouse and the parent company of ABC).

Day-old footage of the trial was made available to the American television networks and their local affiliates (in those relatively primitive, pre-satellite days of international telecommunications, videotapes of the courtroom proceedings had to be transported by plane), although how much of the footage actually aired varied widely from station to station.

As Shandler describes it, “All three national commercial networks featured reports on the case in their nightly prime-time news programs over the course of the proceedings, and all three presented a variety of special programs dealing with the trial near the time of its opening and closing.

“Of the three networks, ABC offered the most extensive regular coverage, broadcasting weekly one-hour summaries nationally and presenting nightly half-hour highlights of the previous day’s proceedings to viewers of its flagship station, WABC (Channel 7) in New York City... ‘Daily videotapes’ were also presented in New York on WNTA (Channel 13), which advertised ‘the most complete coverage’ of the Eichmann trial.”

More than a decade and a half later – by which time Americans had seen a number of Holocaust-related themes on programs ranging from “Star Trek” to “All in the Family” to “Lou Grant” – NBC presented “Holocaust: The Story of the Family Weiss,” a nine-and-a-half hour miniseries broadcast over four consecutive nights in April 1978. Domestic viewership exceeded 120 million for a television event that to some observers marked the height of Holocaust consciousness in America.

(For all its commercial success and generally favorable press notices, “Holocaust” came in for heated criticism as well, with Elie Wiesel reflecting a widespread view when he complained in The New York Times that the miniseries transformed “an ontological event into soap opera.”)

As Shandler illustrates in the book’s final chapters, television’s fascination with the Holocaust only grew stronger after 1978.

Such by-now familiar titles as “Playing for Time,” “Skokie, “ “Return to Poland,” “The Wall,” “The Winds of War,” “Shoah,” “War and Remembrance,” “Miss Rose White, “ and “Liberators” (Shandler includes a detailed account of the controversy surrounding the latter documentary) form just a partial list of Holocaust-related material televised in the century’s closing decades.

This Week @ www.jewishpress.com

"Some 1,900 years after being driven from our land, five-and-a-half million Jews have gathered from all over the globe, including those who came from countries that were sealed off from civilization by an Iron Curtain and those who were brought to the land in bravado operations like Operation Magic Carpet, Operation Ali Baba, and Operation Moses.

They were led by individuals energized by a vision and a dream that had been nurtured through the ages, until the vision and the dream and the hope and the expectation turned into a glorious reality more fantastic than any fairy tale conceived by Andersen or the Brothers Grimm. These were individuals who were fueled by the prophetic vision of veshavu banim ligvulam – the vision of the children returning to their borders." - Dr. Ervin Birnbaum and a truly great wonder.
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"Josef Goebbels, Hitler’s minister of propaganda, was fond of saying that the big lie actually works. He believed that as a rule people are gullible; that if a lie is repeated often enough and with enough conviction – especially if it is voiced by those believed to have authority – the people will believe it. Syrian and Egyptian leaders are proof that Goebbels was not telling a lie. Both Syria and Egypt have actually erected monuments commemorating victory over Israel in October 1973. " Anatomy of The Big Lie with Micah D. Hapern
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"One reason is that most of the distinguished rabbonim who banned three of my books were condemning my position that Chazal’s scientific statements were not based on ruach haKodesh or a mesorah from Sinai and were therefore in some cases mistaken. Now, of course these rabbonim have every right to vehemently oppose this position, and to warn those in their community against it, and I would even agree that it can be a dangerous approach for their community." - And the dialogue continues
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Plus, A Primal Scream, Bible Scenes, and the Disco Rabbi

Finally, exclusively in our print edition (available at newsstands or by calling 718-992-1600 ext. 344) , Healthy Hair, Reality Files, and a new Jewish Press Chanukah contest.

Happy Reading!

Neo-Nazi Professors would have Gotten Tenure at Ben Gurion University

It is not often that I agree with anti-Israel radical lecturer at Ben Gurion University Neve Gordon. But this is an exception.

He was speaking at a little Nuremberg rally in Chicago to express support for Neo-Nazi Norman Finkelstein, who was recently denied tenure at DePaul University. Finkelstein was denied tenure not because of his anti-Jewish agitprop but rather because of his complete absence of any academic publications. Instead, Finkelstein turns out Bash-Israel and Bash-the-Jews "books," published because of their commercial potential.

On Oct 12, 2007, a group of jihadniks and anti-Israel "academics" held a rally to protest the firing of Finkelstein. Neve Gordon spoke there, declaring that if Finkelstein had been a faculty member at Ben Gurion University, he WOULD have gotten tenure. I agree - he would have. David Irving may have also, as well as Robert Faurisson and Leonard Jeffries and Ward Churchill.

Gordon is correct for a change, but not for the reasons he has in mind. Gordon is one of the people trying to convince everyone that a nefarious Zionist bogeyman ("The Israel Lobby" cabal) suppresses freedom of speech and academic freedom in the US, which is why it is so hard to find Israel hating leftists among the faculty there. Ben Gurion University's president herself Rivka Carmi has repeatedly defended the presence of anti-Israel extremists on her payroll. When it comes to anti-Israel extremist faculty, BGU no longer even maintains the pretense of enforcing serious academic standards. About Neve Gordon himself, Professor Alan Dershowitz wrote: "It is my opinion that Neve Gordon has gotten into bed with neo-Nazis, Holocaust justice deniers, and anti-Semites. He is a despicable example of a self-hating Jew and a self-hating Israeli."

In reality, Finkelstein would have gotten tenure at Ben Gurion University because Ben Gurion University has trashed academic standards and expectations of real scholarship from faculty members in certain departments, mainly some in the social sciences. This is why Bash-Israel propagandizing is "accepted" by Ben Gurion University as "scholarly research." Hence a vulgar anti-Israel propagandizer would have no problem being hired and promoted at Ben Gurion University. And he would be in good company there with all the other anti-Israel leftist extremist hatemongers on its campus.

Whereas DePaul University, a Catholic school, displayed courage and devotion to scholarly excellence when it fired Norman Finkelstein, Ben Gurion University has long displayed cowardice and willingness to trash academic standards in order to promote faculty radicalism.

By His Words You Shall Know Him

With its Oct. 5 front-page story on Rudy Giuliani’s experience hosting an often boisterous weekly call-in show on WABC radio for the better part of his mayoralty, The New York Times found yet one more way to portray the Republican presidential frontrunner as a reckless hothead, reflexively rude and not at all willing to suffer fools (or even just annoying callers) gladly.

But for every exquisitely sensitive Manhattan liberal (few if any of whom will be voting for Rudy in 2008 anyway) offended by the former mayor’s politically incorrect temerity, there doubtless are hundreds of hardier souls who found themselves rejoicing in Giuliani’s refreshing take-no-prisoners demeanor and who hope to see more of that side of him in the coming months on the national campaign trail.

Giuliani’s outspokenness, his utter refusal to play by the rules of public etiquette as dictated by the New York Times editorial page, was preserved for posterity in 2000 by CUNY political science professor (and occasional Jewish Press op-ed contributor) Ron Rubin in his book “Rudy, Rudy, Rudy: The Real and the Rational,” a bracing compendium of hundreds of Giuliani quotes from his days as a federal prosecutor through most of his two terms as mayor.

Rubin made no secret of his view of Giuliani: “While critics have derided him as out of control and mean spirited,” he wrote in the book’s introduction, “his warrior’s persona has produced stunning results.... So remarkable is the city’s turnaround that historians debate whether it’s Rudy or Fiorello La Guardia who ranks as the twentieth century’s greatest mayor.”

The cumulative portrait is that of a man by turn reflective and reactive, sympathetic and sarcastic, principled and prickly.

Parrying one of former mayor Ed Koch’s numerous hostile remarks: “I think the less attention he gets the better it will be for his character development.”

Cutting David Dinkins, another former mayor and constant critic, down to suitable size: “If I had his record, I’d be kind of embarrassed to show my face.”

Responding to those, like the faux-plebe columnist Jimmy Breslin, who claimed to miss the old sleazy, crime-infested Times Square: “People who insist on romanticizing the disorder of the past should realize that the reason they have the luxury of nostalgia is that today things have improved.”

Refusing to pander to a caller to his radio show whose son, a robbery suspect, was killed by police: “I think I also have an obligation to deal with the hurt and the harm done to these police officers who were put in a position where they had to kill your son because he was a criminal that wanted to kill other people.”

Psychoanalyzing a caller who complained about the city’s ban on keeping ferrets as pets: “You need somebody to help you. I know you feel insulted by that, but I am being honest with you. This excessive concern with little weasels is a sickness. I’m sorry, that’s my opinion. You should go consult a psychologist or a psychiatrist with this excessive concern – how you are devoting your life to weasels.”

On the Black Ministers Conference of Greater New York not inviting him to its 1998 tribute to Martin Luther King: “The last time I was there it looked like some gathering of the local Democratic convention. It was filled with every elected Democratic official fighting with each other about who would sit in front, who would sit next to each other, who would sit in each other’s lap.”

Scorning the liberal intelligentsia: “The thinking establishment goes into convulsions over the idea that we could ask people on welfare to work, or that we should fingerprint them to prevent fraud. It’s almost as if a secular religion had developed in which these are the things that you must believe to be considered an educated, intelligent and moral person.”

Remembering Crown Heights: “I believe if I [had been] mayor of New York City, they would have made arrests at the first moment that a rock was thrown through a store window, a car was burned or a person was beaten up because they were Jewish or for any other reason.”

Rejecting moral equivalence in the Middle East: “I see a difference, I always have, between the State of Israel and the Palestinian Authority.... I see the necessity of negotiations and compromise, but I believe right now the pressure is being put on one side and not on the other.”

Deconstructing Hillary Clinton: “[W]hen I look at the people around her, they tend to be the most left-wing of the left-wing Democrats.”

Reliving a moment from early in his first term: “Would I throw Arafat out of Lincoln Center again? Yes. And Castro too.”

Note to Readers

We have modified Elliot Resnick's October 1st post, entitled Truth and Certain Jews, because the unfortunate wording of one or two sentences seemed to suggest that Mr. Resnick was condemning an entire group of Orthodox Jews. The point he wanted to make was that not all, or most, or even many Chassidim or Chareidim (or Modern Orthodox Jews for that matter) are guilty of the behavior described in the post; however, it is not an uncommon occurrence in Orthodox communities.

Hypocrisy

Reading through some of the comments on the other blogs I am astonished at the amount of lashon hara being circulated about Elliot Resnick. Isn't it amazing that the same people who are criticizing him for a poor choice of words have no compunction about making personal attacks -- filled with lies -- against him.

Truth in Judaism

Shlomo Carlebach once said, “The Whole World is waiting for Jews to be Jews.” So – what does it mean to be a Jew? We are commanded to be mamleches kohanim v’goy kadosh – a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. Hakadosh Baruch Hu asks us to live our lives by a code of laws and ethics – the Torah.

Being a Jew means that we don’t get to pick and choose which of these laws we follow. It means that we don’t get to set ethical standards – they are set for us. It also means the world expects us to act different.

Why is it that governments throughout the world seem to get a free pass from the UN and media, but Israel is constantly being accused of wrongdoing? Goy kadosh – more is expected of her as Jewish state. Whether we like it or not, that’s the reality of our lives. And on a smaller scale when a visibly Orthodox person commits even the “smallest” of crimes or acts in a way that is not ethical or moral, an entire nation suffers for it. Because we are required to a nation of priests – and a priest is always held to higher level of accountability.

Elliot Resnick made some of these points in his posting last week. The nature of a blog is such that individual people have the right to express their opinions on a variety of topics – and you as the reader have a right to disagree with them. And make that disagreement known.

Do I disagree with what Elliot said? No, but I take issue with the way he said it. If even one of “ours” is doing something wrong – it’s as if we all are. That’s what it means to be a Jew -- communal responsibility for the actions of the individual.

Some of the comments to Elliot’s post hit it right on the head – why do we need to have high-priced Orthodox lawyers speak to large groups of Orthodox Jews about business ethics? Because this is an area in which we need help. Elliot’s right when he says that some people who wouldn’t think of touching a woman, who wouldn’t think of being mechalel Shabbos, who wouldn’t dream of eating non-kosher, wouldn’t think twice of cheating or lying or stretching the truth in a business deal or their personal lives.

It is just a few short weeks since Rosh Hashanah – it behooves us to accept the mussar without shooting the messenger.

Response to "Truth and Certain Jews"

I respectfully disagree with my co-blogger's recent post. While there may be a percentage of religious people who might not be honest, I just don't see how you can suggest the numbers are higher among Orthodox Jews. Anecdotal evidence should not be used to stereotype a large group of people.

Last week my family went to Dorney Park for Succos. There was a designated area with kosher food, succahs, place for Mincha, etc.. When our family went to eat, we noticed that many tables had garbage on them and it bothered me that "our" people weren't cleaning up after themselves (causing a chillul Hashem among other things). But as I watched I saw that people were cleaning up after themselves and others. There had been between 3,000 and 4,000 people using the area that day, so if only 5% didn't clean up, that's 200 people making the other 3,800 look bad. But we have to focus on the 3,800 who were doing the right thing, not the minority who don't know better.

The story with the milk: It's a very interesting story, but did you hear this first hand? If not, it most likely never happened.

Truth and Certain Jews

"Why shouldn't they exaggerate?" he asked me, surprised that I would think otherwise.

While writing a recent article I was unsure how many people had attended a certain event. I happened to mention to someone that as a JTA article on the same subject would soon appear, I would see what number it gave for the crowd and base my estimate accordingly.

"But that number will be an exaggeration," he said.

"Why should JTA exaggerate?" I asked him, knowing that the JTA is a professional agency, not a propaganda operation.

It was to this question that I received his "Why shouldn't they exaggerate?" reply.

To be honest, his question rang so strange in my ears that I had a hard time formulating an answer. And then a few minutes after the conversation's conclusion it came to me: Why shouldn't they exaggerate? Because doing so is false!

This point is obvious of course. But not apparently to this ostensibly religious Jew. To him, the question wasn't why someone should depart from the truth, but why one would ever tell the truth in the first place.

Unfortunately, this gentleman is not alone in placing a very low premium on the value of truth. Unfortunately, some Jews, including or perhaps especially chassidic Jews, will make sure never to shake a woman’s hand and to always faithfully wear a black hat but lie (stretching the truth is perhaps a more delicate term) with astonishing ease.

When one witnesses such behavior one wonders what makes these people so religious after all. One also wonders what kind of impression these Jews make on other people who may be unobservant or non-Jewish but whose inner religious core and rectitude are stronger and more Godly than these "truth stretchers." Surely this cavalier attitude towards truth does not inspire others to praise the God whom these Jews (especially those wearing black hats or beards)apparently represent.

The impulse among many to come closer to God by becoming better Jews is laudable. However, these Jews and all Jews should attach greater importance to basic Biblical values and laws, such as the value of truth, than they do to ensuring that their tzitzis are clearly visible to all.

Unfortunately, the following story tells it all:

A man who daily came to a Jewish study hall decided to bring a bottle of milk with him so that he could greater enjoy the free coffee available every day at the hall. He labeled his bottle "Private" and placed it in the fridge near the coffee. When he opened the fridge at the day's end, he found it nearly empty.

So, thinking that his sign was too small, he proceeded the next day to label his bottle with large letters, "PRIVATE, PLEASE DO NOT TAKE." At the day's end, nary a drop was left in the bottle.

So, learning his lesson and knowing that he was studying among religious people, the next day he wrote on his bottle, " 'DO NOT STEAL' IS ONE OF THE TEN COMMANDMENTS." An empty bottle, nonetheless, greeted him at the end of the day.

The next day, finally understanding the sad reality of present day Jews, he wrote the following: "Not chalav yisrael." The milk was untouched.