Jewish in a Gentile World

The Middle District of Pennsylvania has rendered its opinion in the Intelligent Design case, Kitzmiller v. Dover School District . For those who have been living under a rock this year: the case challenged the constitutionality of a local school board's decision requiring science teachers to read a brief statement about the theory of "Intelligent Design" (or "ID" for short) before teaching evolution. I confess, before reading the opinion, I was a bit surprised by the outcome. What I had heard about ID seemed to indicate that it was a reasonable middle ground, supported by a small minority of scientists, and based on my own knowledge of constitutional law (I am a law librarian with a law degree) I thought it could have passed constitutional muster. However, after reading the opinion, it appears that that a borderline scientific theory has been hijacked by people with an agenda that cannot pass constitutional muster. Let me preface this discussion by saying tha...

Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, starts at sunset tonight! Wishing all of my readers a happy and "sweet" new year in 5766!

Please note: I am not a rabbi and am not certified in any way to make decisions about Jewish law. This article is intended solely as food for thought. It is based on what I was taught, supported by my review of the relevant passages in the Talmud. Thou shalt not murder... Thou shalt not steal... Thou shalt not covet... In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, as the social order in New Orleans crumbled, many intellectuals contemplated their navels in their cozy living rooms and debated the morality of the behavior we see on our TV screens. Most agreed that ethical constraints need to be adapted to the situation, though some took a hard-line approach and maintained that rules are rules. It is worth noting that Jewish law addressed these issues long ago, not from the safety and security of ivory towers, but from a desperate real-world situation where oppressors routinely ordered Jews to violate Jewish law or suffer death. The Talmud takes a practical approach to the situation that is quite clos...

Israeli archaeologist Eilat Mazar has uncovered the foundation walls of an ancient and significant public building just outside the walls of the Old City in Jerusalem. She believes that she has found King David's palace, the palace that the Bible describes as being built by King Hiram of Tyre about 1,000 years Before the Christian Era (BCE). This remarkable find was announced earlier this month. If you haven't heard about this story, don't feel guilty: Lots of people haven't heard about it. It has hardly made a blip on the mainstream press in the United States. A search of a LexisNexis news database covering hundreds of newspapers gets only 6 results for the search "King David w/10 palace" since the beginning of August. Searches for the archaeologist by various spellings of her name return the same results. I would not have known about it myself if I had not read an editorial about the discovery in the Jewish Exponent last week. And no wonder the media doesn...

A colleague of mine recently told me the story of a couple identified on a restaurant check as "Jew couple." Apparently, some restaurants routinely use descriptions of patrons, rather than table numbers, to identify which table goes with a check. My colleague reported that she has received restaurant checks identifying her as "blond girl" or even "pretty girl." What is so wrong, she wondered, about calling two people "Jew couple" that the New Jersey attorney general would be investigating the story? First, let me emphasize that the word "Jew" is not an offensive term. I am a Jew. I am Jewish. I use these two phrases interchangeably and see no difference between them, and many other Jews feel the same way. In fact, when the subject came up in the newsgroup soc.culture.jewish, several people were offended by the idea that the word "Jew" is an offensive term, as if being a Jew were such a terrible thing that people should...

My friend has just informed me that the Kapoor family, discussed in my last post , has been released from detention! The next hurdle, of course, is the possibility of deportation, but at least they have been reunited with their family. See an article from an English language Indian newspaper: http://in.rediff.com/news/2005/jul/29nri.htm

A colleague of mine told me a harrowing tale of her experience on public transit. She boarded a train and saw a man standing in the back, moving in strange ways. She thought he might be a suicide bomber: he had little boxes apparently taped to his body. Being the responsible citizen that she is, she promptly reported it to the conductor. The conductor laughed. He said, "I thought the same thing the first time I saw him, but he's not a bomber. It's a Jewish prayer thing." The little boxes she saw "taped" (actually strapped with leather) to his body were tefillin, boxes containing verses of scripture that are worn during morning prayer to fulfill the commandment "bind them [words of Torah] as a sign upon your hand and they shall be frontlets between your eyes" (Deut. 11:18). The boxes certainly contain something of great power, but not in the way my colleague had in mind! I found her story quite amusing until a few days later, I received an email fro...

Yesterday, the Supreme Court rendered its decisions in the two cases related to Ten Commandments displays. In McCreary County, Kentucky v. ACLU of Kentucky , the Court held that the display of large, readily visible framed copies of the Ten Commandments in county courthouses violated the Establishment Clause of the Constitution, and this violation was not remedied when the counties, after initiation of the lawsuit, added displays of secular documents containing religious references. In Van Orden v. Perry , the Court held that a donated 6-foot-high monolith inscribed with the Ten Commandments, added to a preexisting display outside the courthouse that already contained a few dozen monuments and markers, did not violate the establishment clause. I have provided links to the full text of the opinions at the end of this post, but I have not yet had a chance to thoroughly review both of these lengthy opinions (75 pages each). I skimmed the summaries at the beginning of the opinions, and ...

Today is Cinco de Mayo (Spanish for May 5th), and not only that, but it's May 5, 2005: 05/05/05, Cinco de Mayo de Cinco, a great excuse for a party, for Mexican food and Mexican beer. Most Americans don't have a clue what Cinco de Mayo is, aside from the fact that it's Mexican and is an good excuse to get plastered. Most people who have any idea about the holiday think it is Mexican Independence Day (May 5, July 4, what's the difference?), but actually it commemorates a rather small but surprising underdog military victory by the Mexicans against the invading French, a battle that occurred almost 40 years after Mexico's independence. In Mexico, it is a regional holiday, celebrated only in the state where the battle occurred. I heard on the radio this morning that some in the Hispanic community are becoming uncomfortable with the way the Anglos, and particularly the Anglo commercial interests, have misappropriated Cinco de Mayo. The holiday is rapidly becoming a Mexi...

I always think of this story at this time of year. I heard the story from my roommate, who was a good friend of the David in this story, and she heard the story from David. She assured me that this was a true story, but even if it isn't true, it should be. I went to a college in Pennsylvania where about 20% of the students were Jewish. The dining hall made a special effort for the Jewish students at Passover. They had a special Passover line at the dining hall with matzah, Passover cakes and cookies and even gefilte fish. Gefilte fish is a popular Jewish delicacy and a Passover tradition, sort of like a crab cake but made with chopped up fish held together with matzah meal and eggs. It is cooked and stored in fish broth, then is served with sliced carrots (often cooked in the same broth) and horseradish (another Passover tradition). The gentiles working in the dining hall had no idea what gefilte fish was, and they were clearly uneasy being around this strange food. Several ...

Just a quick heads-up for those still shopping for Passover: Beware the Passover aisle! Some supermarkets are very diligent about keeping their Passover aisle stocked only with Kosher-for-Passover items, but others are very sloppy about it. In my neck of the woods, Pathmark has always been very diligent, and a new Genuardis seems to be very good, but the Acme near me has always been appalling. Not really surprising, coming from a chain that once ran a full-page ad in the Sunday paper announcing a sale on “Challah, a Passover Tradition!” Challah is a kind of bread, and the only Passover tradition related to it is not eating it! I just got back from a last-minute shopping trip to my Acme, picking up eggs and milk before Passover starts, and I noticed that they had shelved some Hamentaschen in the Passover aisle. Hamentaschen are Purim cookies. I’ve never heard of kosher-for-Passover hamentaschen, but I gave Acme the benefit of the doubt and carefully checked the label. Not surprisingly,...

The United States Supreme Court recently heard arguments about the posting of the Ten Commandments on government property. I've watched cases like this come and go for a number of years, and I think overall the courts have done a good job of assessing the situations presented: a two-and-a-half ton monument to the Ten Commandments placed as the centerpiece of a courthouse rotunda, with the explicit intent of reminding citizens of the sovereignty of G-d and His revealed law, was found to be an impermissible establishment of religion. Glassroth v. Moore, 335 F.3d 1282 (11th Cir. 2003). A small plaque that was a longstanding fixture at the disused entrance to a historic courthouse was not. Freethought Soc'y v. Chester County, 334 F.3d 247 (3rd Cir. 2003). The Ten Commandments controversy has split the Jewish community in interesting ways. The Orthodox, who believe that the Ten Commandments were originally carved in stone by G-d's own power and given to Moses on Mount Sinai...

Last night while watching TV, I saw a rather odd commercial, with lots of trendy people text-messaging "innw," which stands for "If Not Now When." The commercial never said what product it was shlogging, but there was a follow-up commercial a minute later to inform me that the "if not now when" slogan was for Doritos, in which a large crowd engages in an act of urban destruction. Oy, a classical rabbi's most famous saying used to shlog a product that isn't even kosher! For those not familiar with the commercial's catch-phrase: it is a quote from the great Rabbi Hillel, for whom the Jewish college student organization was named. In Pirkei Avot (a tractate of the Mishnah recording ethical sayings), Rabbi Hillel is quoted as saying, "If I am not for myself, then who will be for me? And if I am only for myself, then what am I? And if not now, when?" Rabbi Hillel used this phrase to teach that we should not hesitate to do the righ...

On a lighter note... Richard Conn Henry, Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Johns Hopkins University, has proposed a revision to the Gregorian calendar used by most of the Western world for the last 400 years. Under his proposed calendar, which he calls the C&T calendar, the length of the year would be adjusted so that every day falls on the same day of the week every year. A sort of "leap week" would be added between June and July every five or six years to keep the calendar in sync with the solar year. Of course, none of this has any effect on the Jewish calendar, which has been confusing gentiles for more than two millennia. Our calendar is based on rules from the Creator given to us in oral and written Torah, so we can't change it and we will continue to confuse you for the foreseeable future. Why change the secular calendar? Laziness, of course! There is no limit to the amount of work geniuses will do in order to save themselves some work (I spe...

I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it. Philadelphia is in the national spotlight this week for arresting fundamentalist Christians who were counter-protesting at a gay pride event. It is hard to be certain of the facts at this time, because the rhetoric on all sides drowns out any attempt at rationality. The Outfest organizers complain of homophobia while the Christian protesters complain of homofascism. The Christian protestors claim they were charged with hate crimes for reading the Bible, while Outfest organizers claimed they were disrupting the event by shouting hate speech into a bull horn. Outfest organizers claim the Christians were trying to incite a riot while the Christians claim that it was the Outfest organizers who were trying to start a riot. The Christians claim that the arrests were unjustified while the Outfest organizers claim that the Christians went out of their way to get arrested to make themselves martyrs a...