Memorial Days...Lost Tribes in a Lost Cause

During all the official observances for Memorial Day I doubt that any tears were shed, or encomiums offered up, for the confederate soldiers who died fighting the Civil War. For despite what the Daughters of the Confederacy or other "the South shall Rise Again" apologists would like us to believe, history has rendered it's unambiguous verdict. The rebels of the South were, at best, seditious traitors to the Union and the Constitution and, at worst, vile exploitative racists and/or their hired guns. But not to worry. The South has a few days of its own and three states from the old confederacy will be observing their own memorial day this coming Wednesday June 3rd.

In the long and bitter Golus that our people has had to endure we've been asked/forced/ volunteered to give the last full measure of devotion to causes that were not ours. I'm probably not going too far out on a limb to surmise that there were Jewish soldiers fighting for and against the British Empire, Napoleon, The Ottoman Turks, The Tsar, the Bolsheviks and the Allies in World Wars (I ) and maybe even II. But I think nothing quite captures the irony of it all quite as well as the only Jewish military cemetery outside of Israel, The Hebrew Confederate Cemetery, located in Richmond, Virginia.

You see the soldiers and their families did not request or demand separate, exclusively Jewish burial grounds based on Halakha or even basic Qedusha-Havdala consciousness. The cause for this historical oddity coming into existence was the racism of the X-tian warriors for the Lost Cause. The all-Jewish burial ground was created by the anti-Semitism of the two Confederate military cemeteries, in Spotsylvania Court House and Fredericksburg. They refused to bury the Jewish Confederate soldiers killed in the battles of Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville and Wilderness. They didn’t want “Jewish boys” in their cemeteries.

So while Jews were good enough to fight, bleed, be dismembered and die-in-war for the Confederacy... they were deemed not quite good enough to rest-in-peace with their fellow Confederates. In a historical inversion of Ruths declaration of fealty to Naomi and her Nation the Rebels, in effect, told the Jewish (Moabite Princes) converts to their cause:
בַּאֲשֶׁר תָּמוּתִי אָמוּת, וְשָׁם לא אֶקָּבֵר= "where thou diest, will I die, but there will I NOT allow you to be buried;".

Living as we do in an era of an all volunteer hi-tech military where the average citizen, let alone those ensconced in Jewish enclaves, has no sense of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan currently being waged, it's hard for us the imagine the vortex of emotions that Jewish soldiers and their families must have felt during other eras of our long Diaspora . But what we all ought to be feeling on Memorial Day is a profound sense of Thanksgiving. Thanks to G-d and his agents, the brave US Soldiers who hastened the coming of V.E. Day and the conquest of the Third Reich and thanks to G-d for moving us to a point in history where we and our children must no longer fight for causes not our own, especially unjust and lost ones.

I don't mean to be judgmental of the thirty Jews lying in the Confederate cemetery in Richmond as I am unfamiliar with the circumstances of their conscription/ enlistments/ deaths nor do I know anything about the attitudes of their families and themselves towards the Confederacy or about Black Slavery in the antebellum South. But I would hazard a guess that the Jewish reverend from the very same capital of the Confederacy, Max Michelbacher of Congregation Beth Ahabah, who penned these words of prayer:
Here I stand now with many thousands of the sons of the sunny South, to face the foe, to drive him back, and to defend our natural rights. O Lord, G-d of Israel, be with me in the hot season of the contending strife; protect and bless me with health and courage to bear cheerfully the hardships of war...

Be unto the Army of this confederacy, as thou were of old, unto us, thy chosen people— Inspire them with patriotism! Give them when marching to meet, or, overtake the enemy, the wings of the eagle— in the camp be Thou their watch and ward— and in the battle, strike for them, O Almighty G-d of Israel, as thou didst strike for thy people on the plains of Canaan—...

Give unto the officers of the Army and of the Navy of the Confederate States, enterprise, fortitude and undaunted courage; teach them the ways of war and the winning of victory. Guard and preserve, O L-rd, the President of the Confederate States and all officers, who have the welfare of the country truly at heart. Bless all my fellow-citizens, and guard them against sickness and famine! May they prosper and increase!.

would be mightily disillusioned to discover that his coreligionists, who fought alongside the X-tian Confederates in life, would be segregated from them in death. When the twists and turns of Golus cause our Havdala consciousness to grow fuzzy and dim, the anti-Semites that we live among have a nasty habit of sharpening it up.

Derekh Ahgav- the wrought iron fence around the burial plot of the 30 Jewish Soldiers is considered a work of art.

Qedusha-Havdala. Have you had YOURS today??? Hmmm???

A Quality Post

Click

Fascinating, nuanced and revealing. If you read until the end of the post you'll find that there's truth to the old saw that all writing is autobiographical.

The Eternal Need to Curry Favor

I came across a fascinating Abarvenel in Naso that implies that as far as the esteem for Talmidei Khakhomim in society "'twas ever thus"

גם אפשר לפרש עוד הברכה הזאת בדרך אחר •והוא שכבר זכרו המדיניים שהמדינה תתחלק בכלל בג׳ חלקים מבני אדם: הא׳ מעובדי האדמה ובעלי האומניות והמלאכות שיקראו עובדים. והחלק הב׳ מהמתבודדים והמעיינים אם בחכמות ובמשפט ואם בתפלות שיקראו עיוניים וחלק מאנשי המלחמה וגברי הארץ והם הנקראים אנשי חיל וחכמי רומי קוראים אותם לאבור״אטורי אור״אטורידי״ינשודי. והיתה ברכת הכהנים על שלשתם להיות הקבוץ המדיני מתחלק אליהם. כי כנגד חלק העובדים אמר יברכך ה׳ וישמרך שישלח ברכה בכל מעשה ידיכם וישמרכם מכל נזק. וכנגד חלק המעיינים אמר יאר ה׳ פניו אליך ויחנך. כנגד אנשי החיל אמר ישא ה׳ פניו אליך וישם לך שלום. רוצה לומר ולא למלחמה להכשל בה.

My humble adaptation:
"The Sages (Political Scientists? Sociologists) of Rome expounded a societal model that is composed of three basic groups: The workers, mainly farmers and craftsmen, the scholastics comprising academicians, legislators and priests and the Military. The tripartite Birkas Kohanim is directed towards these various classes. The first section blesses the workers with increased produce and profitability and to be guarded against reversals and losses. The second section is directed towards the scholastics (no elaboration provided). The third is directed towards the military wishing them peace instead of war."

When it comes to the clerical class Abarvenel does not elaborate as to why the brakha of " ויחנך " is apropos. Could it be that the virtues of those who drive an economy or who hazard their own physical safety to protect the rest of society are self-evident, making them beloved by the balance of society and that they are attractive, מלאים חן , sans any Divine blessing?

OTOH the TKs of society have always needed good PR. The boon that they proffer to the commonweal is metaphysical and, as such, mostly invisible. There have always been, and there will always be, naysayers and detractors who, observing no tangible benefits from either their learning or their prayers, will deride Talmidei Khakhomim as parasites and pose the eternal apiqorsisha question: מאי אהני לן רבנן = "How have the Rabbis helped us?"?

Perhaps this is why the brakha of khen-that intangible, inscrutable (from the root of חנם = "for nothing") comeliness and beauty is directed specifically to the clerical class in society.

And to such a brakha, most especially in this age of incessant invective against those who have dedicated their lives to Torah V'Avodah, particularly on the J-Blogosphere, all I can do is respond with a fervent and resounding אמן ואמן and to the Kohanim who proffered it I extend יישר כוחכם וחילכם לאורייתא...כהנים .
Qedusah-Havdala...Have you had YOURS today??? Hmmm???

Bovine Justice

Is the more colorful of the two a Shor or a Par? Considering what the matador does for a living, was the bovine being nogeyakh an Ahdam or another Shor/Par?

10 Brayish Dinarim for the wittiest pithiest caption.

Clutching at Straws

Desperation drives many people to poor decision making, especially when coupled with false hopes. Think of a compulsive gambler down to his last few dollars whom an unscrupulous bookie gives, for a modest fee of course, a tip on the ponies.

Baruch, HaShem I have no first hand knowledge of the Mumps outbreak currently roiling the frum world. Everyone in my family has "gotten their shots" and is up to date. But based on things I've been reading it seems that many are convinced that vaccines may cause everything from Autism to Cancer to X-linked myopathy and every disease in between.

I wonder how much of the anti-vaccine hysteria current in Frum society was fueled by Dr. Andrew Wakefield, the British doctor whose 1998 study linked linked the Measles, Mumps and Rubella vaccine (MMR) to the development of Autism Spectrum Disorder. And I wonder if now that, as of yesterday May 24, 2010, Dr. Wakefield was barred from practicing medicine in his native Britain by the British General Medical Council, anyone is reconsidering their position on the matter and accepting Medical, ahem, orthodoxy. And while 10 of the papers 13 authors have retracted their findings Dr. Wakefield, who earlier this year quit the Autism Center that he founded in Austin, Texas in 2004, is sticking to his guns. Wakefield told The Associated Press Monday's decision was a sad day for British medicine. "None of this alters the fact that vaccines can cause autism," he said.

Does this mean that Wakefield is a man ahead of his time, a Copernican heliocentric iconoclast resisting the strident efforts of geocentric physician lapdogs of the big pharmaceutical companies to silence his progressive voice? Or is he a stubborn crackpot who has dug in his heels to validate his youthful work lest history squirt the blood of children who died unnecessarily from MMR in the wake of his published findings onto his hands?

I'm no scientist and , thank HaShem, have not been tested with Autism in the family but the reports of Britain's General Medical Council finding that Wakefield and two other doctors were guilty of serious professional misconduct by showing a "callous disregard" for the children in their study, published in 1998 in the medical journal Lancet, when they took blood samples from children at his son's birthday party, paying them 5 pounds (about $7.20) each and later joking about the incident, does not inspire respect or confidence. Though I am a layman, this does not sound like the approach of a serious researcher.

I find it telling that Dr. Paul Offit, chief of infectious diseases at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia described Dr. Wakefield as "...almost like a Christ-like figure and it doesn't matter that science has proven him wrong, he is a hero for parents who think no one else is listening to them." Odd that frum Jews, who have suffered so much from followers of the original Christ-like figure. would latch on to his theories.

I do know that in the wake of the spread of mumps to a major out-of-town Frum community that the President of Bikur Cholim of California had this to say: “With more parents exercising the “personal belief” exemption and not immunizing their children, the risk of exposure and contracting these diseases increases. The decision not to immunize goes beyond effecting one’s own child and family, it directly impacts society. For example, children not immunized for measles and rubella that contract these diseases can place pregnant women, such as teachers and day care providers, and their unborn children at risk.”

Does anyone know who out there has the "braiteh plaitzehs"= "broad shoulders/ willingness and credibility to shoulder massive responsibility" to ignore his advice? It seems to me that this is a prime example of כל המשנה ידו על התחתונה=(loose homiletic translation) "the burden of proof rests on the one who would change the status quo."
Qedusha-Havdala. have you had YOURS today??? Hmmm???

Big Deal

A short section of footage showing President Kennedy and the first Lady the night before his assassination has been "discovered".

To which I say"Big Deal". Does it add one whit of insight to our understanding of the assassination? Of his policies? It's just another voyeuristic excursion on the slimy-slope of the cult of celebrity.

Fiery Volcanoes out of Molehills

When religious principles, maintaining political power or protecting morality are at stake it's easy to see how some might be moved to either homicidal or libricidal flaming fury. Still, sometimes peoples value systems are pretty skewered, so warped in fact that they can raise trivial matters to a level of significance high enough to awaken their inner-dragon to seek fire-breathing vengeance.

In the libricidal "much-ado-about nothing" department we find these strange case histories:

Don't Mess with Our heroes: In 1760 a tract penned by Simeon Uriel Freudenberger from Luzern, was publicly burnt in Altdorf, capital of the Swiss canton of Uri . Why did it merit burning? Because it argued against the historicity of the Wilhelm Tell myth, that the acts attributed to him were fictitious. Maybe it was municipal pride. You see Altdorf, according to the legend, was where William Tell shot the apple from his son's head.

Wouldn't a Steamroller have Accomplished the Same Thing? I guess this was an early visceral reaction by one wanting to keep the disabled disabled against the new zeitgeist of being differently abeled.

In 1842, Armand Dufau, new director at the school for the blind in Paris, France ordered the burning of all books written in the new braille code. What, genoi, did he have against the new code? Was there anything heretical or licentious about reading with ones hands rather than with ones eyes? Were he alive today Dufau would probably make a bonfire of the blackberries as people use them to talk with their thumbs instead of their tongues.

How Dare you Imply that We Keep Up with the Joneses?!?

What some people won't to do to books that claim that they live their lives to keep up appearances. The book, Valley of the Squinting Windows, criticized the inhabitants of Devlin, Ireland for being overly concerned with their image towards neighbors. So in 1918 both the moist-finger-to-the-wind inhabitants and the neighbors they were allegedly trying to keep up with, consigned "Valley" to the flames.

Your yikhus bothers me...So lets destroy all records of it. In a case of libricide that can only be described as partial, self-inflicted cultural dismemberment/suicide Red Guards in the Chinese Cultural Revolution campaigning against "the four old things" burned genealogy books that recorded many generations of patrilineal descent. As far as Mormons (and maybe some Rebbisha Kinder) are concerned, this is probably libricide at its most heinous.

Think of all the money we'll save on translating: While there are many examples of using libricide as a tool to suppress unpopular or destabilizing religious or political ideas it's rare to find an example of libricide as a tool to eradicate a despised language. When the Iranian army defeated the pro-Soviet Kurdish Republic of Mahabad in north Iran in December 1946 and January 1947, they burned all Kurdish-language books that they could find, as well as closing down the Kurdish printing press and banning the teaching of Kurdish. You can accuse the Tziyonim ha'Arurim of many terrible things and make many of the charges stick. But TTBOMK they never perpetrated public burnings of Yiddish language Literature.
Qedusha-Havdala...have you had YOURS today??? Hmmm???

Applying the Brakes... While Others Floor It

Maybe this requires some insider knowledge but I find this notice too brief for the soul of my witlessness.

Is this something new on the horizon, nishtanu haItim, or is this a continuation of an old policy? If it is the former what has changed, i.e. what is is about the NEW hafgonos that evoked this message? Is the Azhara a veiled threat (none n is explicated)? Will violators have to pay a k'nas? Be tossed from the Dorm and/or Yeshiva? Lose their Kollel Check? Was this intended for bnei haYeshiva only or are similar signs up signed by hanhalas Mir advising other Jerusalem residents to cease and desist from Hafgona participation?

Hat Tip Rafi G. and R' Harry

Care to Share?

Too much togetherness? This brings a whole new meaning to being selective about the friends you choose to associate with. Is hermetically sealing ourselves off from contagion an answer? I think not.

שלא לשמה Libricide

There have been some notable exceptions to the characteristically malevolent history of Biblioclasm. It's hard to even categorize such cases as Libricide. Typically books and /or other media are burned because of their dangerous content. Books containing heretical ideas, notions threatening the existing political or social power structure and/or lascivious images or word pictures are killed before they propagate further. Some might even characterize these motivations as a kind of preemptive murder in self-defense rather than cold-blooded killings. But at times books are burned or destroyed for entirely different reasons.

1. Killing a Book(s) to save a human being(s):
A. Moshe Rabenus casting down of the original Lukhos was done in order to save the Jewish People. As the Midrash puts it מוטב שתידון כפנויה ואל תדון כאשת איש (cp this Rashi ). He "killed" the Lukhos because they posed a Rodeph-like clear and imminent danger to a People...his People!
B. Ilya Ehrenburg, a Soviet writer, recounted how during a severe winter in his childhood his family burned books from a village library for heating.

2. Trial by Fire
Taking a page out of the Torahs supernatural trial of the Sotah and/or S'neh imagery, in Toledo, Spain in 1085 two competing prayer-books were thrown into a fire to see which one would be vindicated by survival. According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, the resulting verdict was hardly miraculous.

3. Killing Books for Spite
This attitude is best reflected in the words of she who was first adjudicated by Solomonic wisdom: גַּם-לִי גַם-לָךְ לֹא יִהְיֶה--גְּזֹרוּ.= "'It (the baby) shall be neither mine nor thine; tear it.' Sometimes people don't mind humans or books that they may like, or even love, themselves being destroyed to deny their enemies the pleasure of their company. This was the case (near miss) when French Egyptologists threatened "a second burning of a library in Alexandria" if their British enemies did not drop demands for the archaeological treasures.

4. Killing a Book to Save a Humans Reputation
A. Here I need the help of erudite readers to fill in the blanks. IIRC in either שיח שרפי קודש or אמת ואמונה there is an anecdote about the Khidushei HaRi"m coming to the Kotzker with a Khibur=composition that he had completed on Shulkhan Arukh Koshen Mishpat asking for a haskama= letter of approbation. The latter refused saying "The Shak"h learned Torah Lishmah. If you publish this sefer lomdim will learn this sefer exclusively and stop looking at the Shak"h altogether. Ess kimt eim nisht= he does not deserve such a fate." The Ri"m then went to the fireplace, pronounced a brakha of "ברוך אשר קדשנו במצוותיו וצוונו לשמוע לדברי חכמים"= "Blessed is the One who sanctified us through His commandments and commanded us to hearken to the words of the wise", and cast the fruits of his fertile Torah-mind into the flames. A kind of Libricide reenactment of Tamar's near sacrifice on behalf of Yehuda.

B. Rabbi Nachman of Breslov is reported to have written a book which he himself burned in 1808. His followers, up to the present, mourn "The Burned Book" and seek in their Rabbi's surviving writings for clues as to what the lost volume contained and why was it destroyed. Assuming for a moment the historicity of this episode (I am suspicious of Jewish stuff when Wiki points me to the only source. Anybody reading out there ever hear of this or know any details?) could it have been for a Khidushei HaRi"m-like motivation?

C. להבדיל בין קודש לחול there was a "near miss" when an author contracted a hit on his own book , apparently to preserve his own demented view of his reputation and legacy. I speak of Franz Kafka's letter to his friend and literary executor Max Brod: "Dearest Max, my last request: Everything I leave behind me ... in the way of diaries, manuscripts, letters (my own and others'), sketches, and so on, [is] to be burned unread." Some might term this more of a living will containing a DNR order than a mafia hit. However you understand it, the world literature community is, on the whole, deeply grateful to Mr. Brod for ignoring Kafka's will.

D. L'havdil between fact and fiction; an author/screenwriter, apparently even more intrigued by biblioclasm than I, one Brian Stableford's in his "The Halcyon Drift", depicts a future in one of the leading planets in the Galaxy is "New Alexandria". (Old Alexandria being the site of several of the more infamous historical mass libricides.) There, the destruction of books is regarded as the most heinous of deeds. Nevertheless, a protagonist agrees to help the Khor-Monsa, an alien species, in destroying books and records of their remote ancestors which were found in a drifting spaceship—since the books contained a shameful secret whose publication might have led to the present Khor-Monsa losing their social status and becoming targets of discrimination. (I wonder if the shameful crime that the Khor-Monsas ancestors were guilty of was libricide?!?)

5. Libricide similar to controlled forest burnings:
As park rangers will do a controlled burn to "prune" a forest to save it from utter destruction in the next raging forest fire or insect infestation, sometimes some books must die so that more will be born and/or continue living long full lives. At least this seems to be the theory behind the bizarre protest staged in Kansas City on May 27, 2007, by the proprietors of Prospero's Books when they publicly burned a portion of their inventory to protest what they perceived as "society's increasing indifference to the printed word. " ( Maybe it was just societies perceived indifference to their earning a living?) In any event, this counter-intuitive protest is reminiscent of the Buddhist Monk who immolated himself to protest the South Vietnamese governments persecution of Buddhists.

6. Doing Honor by Burning
The Sikhs cremate their dead and consider this the greatest honor that can be rendered human remains. So when their (sic) holy book the Guru Granth Sahib is damaged beyond repair they immolate it in a ceremonial book burning. Sound familiar?

7. Libricide as a prelude to homicide
Not exactly benign but not directed at the book so much as at it's author. This was the path that lKarl Ludwig Sand, assassin of August von Kotzebue pursued.

A Cautionary Tale...

...of the difficulties inherent in prosecuting and punishing molesters.

Sure there's a problem. A huge and life-destroying one. But solutions ought not be simplistic lest other innocent lives and reputations are destroyed. The truth? As slippery and elusive as ever.
Qedusha-Havdala...Have you had YOURS today???

One Picture Worth 1,000 Negative Stereotypes

I don't really know a thing about either the new Supreme Court Nominee nor the caricaturist responsible for this masterpiece but it offends and frightens me.

Perhaps he exaggerates the lips , teeth, nose, hair and/or ears of all his subjects. i suppose that's a caricaturists job/art/craft. But this portrait has Der Stürmer written all over it. My fervent hope and prayer is that it is deemed too ugly and tasteless by op/ed page editors across the country and that it garners little more attention than I get here in my 'Ol Red-Tent Isolation Blog.
Post Script- I have to change the posts title lest the haters who haven't seen this monstrous caricature get a hold of it through Google.
PPS-The blogger that banned me has posted in negative response to my post here as well as Tzigs post from yesterday. It makes for a clinic in the pathology of Havdala-Obliviousness. I highly recommend it.

Do you Remember? You MUST Remember!

I'm asking for my erudite readership of two to help me out on this one to fill in the blanks and flesh out the anecdote.

I recall hearing in a Drasha by a TK that there was once a Godol contemporaneous to the Mahrsh"a (or was it the Mahrsh"a himself) who led an old time pre-Volozhin revolution Yeshiva. When he was בוחן = give an entrance exam (to) the prospective students he would ask them " Since Khaza'l teach us that ALL Jews were present at Ma'amad Har Sinai = the revelation at Sinai I need to ask you; Do you remember it? What can you tell me about it?"

What I need help with is: A. Who was the בעל המעשה = the protagonist of the story and B. Was this the ONLY question on the entrance exam (that's how I recall it but I'd like corroboration) or just the first/final question. Any and all other details welcome.

BTW...What can YOU recall about Ma'amad Har Sinai? No answer required to comment on this Red-Tent Blog but I'm just curious.

How can One Commit Suicide...but Go On Breathing?

By perpetrating libricide on his/her own work.

Celsius 450

Hint for understanding post title

Yesterday I explored what book burning, AKA Libricide, has in common with murder. Today I'd like to ponder why the favorite method of execution seem to be burning.

Homicide can be effected through a myriad of methods and Halakha has codified 4 specific methods of capital punishment; stoning, burning, killing and strangling. Lest anyone think that I'm carrying the analogy too far, the infamous Talmud burning in Paris in 1242 A.C.E. was preceded by a trial in which charges were brought against the Talmud and burning was only ordered after the "defendant" was "found guilty". Ultimately, with or without actual trials and due process, all books and scrolls that fall victim to libricide have been found guilty of sedition or heresy in the court of public opinion or in the judgemental minds of the authorities that ordered their destruction. Involuntary book-slaughters are few and far between . Nearly all libricides are murder in the first degree, premeditated and with presence of malice, plenty of it. But I digress.

There have been a few notable exceptions to the rule of death by inflamation:

1. Arguably, Moshe Rabenus casting down of the original Lukhos was an act of libricide (actually a sort of therapeutic abortion) particularly as per Khaza'l there was no inscription left at all on the shattered shards of the lukhos rishonos and, if understood as an act of libricide the method of "killing" was most akin to stoning... i.e. being cast down from a high position resulting in deadly force on impact.

2. In 1258 A.C.E. when the Mongols invaded Baghdad they destroyed many libraries including that of "The House of Wisdom". It seems that their preferred method was "drowning" akin to the Sanhedrin administered capital punishment of strangulation, rather than burning. "It was said that the waters of the Tigris ran black for six months with ink from the enormous quantities of books flung into the river." (Wiki).

While not, strictly speaking, an act of Deicide the erasure of Parshas Sotah as part of the supernatural trial of the suspected adulteress also involved a book erasure in water rather than immolation in fire and is referred to Mekhiyas Sh'mo yisborakh= "the erasure/blotting out of His holy name" an expression usually associated with the Torah mandated treatment of the arch-enemy Amalekites.

3. According to the apocryphal work "The Book of Maccabees" it seems that the Greek oppressors first ripped seforim to pieces before immolating them. Was this only to facilitate the burning? or was the ripping the actual "libricide" and the burning merely a posthumous "cremation" so as not to accord the seforim the honor of in-ground burial? If it is the former the ripping seems to best correspond to the Sanhedrin administered capital punishment of killing= decapitation as it is the primary method of disintegration and sundering the seat of mans baser physical/animal element from the seat of his soul , the "head"/ mind.

4. The long and varied history of censorship can be viewed as a kind of libricide as well and has elements in common with decapitation (denuding the book of it's "brains" and direction) and halakhic death by burning. The halakhic mode of burning was not an auto da fe burning at the stake but an execution that left the body and many of the internal organs unsinged. Similarly in censorship when certain passages are blacked out or excised the "internal guts" are destroyed thus killing the whole organism which remains externally intact to the untrained eye. Censorship may also be akin to strangulation (where the vital life force is "squeezed" out of the organism).

The practical reason for burning over other methods of destruction/murder is that it is quick, easy, efficient and effortless. But there may be more to it than that: Like the "original crime" of the offending book that aroused fiery passions and spread ideas (either through circulation or through engendering an oral tradition) like wildfire there is a certain poetic justice, a quid pro quo, in fighting fire with fire. Book-burners attack the books that they deem to have cast excessive and thus destructive light with excessive and destructive heat.

Finally there may be a connection between Biblioclasm and the burning of consecrated items defiled through impurity. When Qorbonos or Terumah become tamai= ritually impure we dispose of them through burning. The human mind is a vessel /instrument for containing the highest Qedusha... the holiness of Torah. When it becomes adulterated with anti-existential thoughts it is akin to qodshim that have "gone bad" and the prescribed disposal method is burning. IIRC one of the meforshim explain that this is the reason for the שריפת בת כהן= the execution by burning of the adulteress bas kohen. It's not that her crime deserves a different form of capital punishment but that her desecrated Qedusha requires a different form of disposal/destruction.
Qedusha-Havdala...have you had YOURS today??? Hmmm???

Killing Books. And I'm Not Talking About a REALLY Poor Review!

I find it fascinating and revealing that the technical terms for book-burning are "biblioclasm" or "libricide." This is some very apt verbiage indeed.

"Biblioclasm" conveys a kind of iconoclasm directed at books. We are all familiar with the Midrash that presents our patriarch Avraham Avinu as histories first iconoclast smashing the idols that his father Terakh sold for a living while the proprietor was out of the store. As followers of Maimonides 13 principles we Jews eschew any physical incarnation and representation of the Deity. But the written Torah is something we can touch, see and feel. So I find it particularly poignant that of all the Greek roots that connote breaking or crushing, the one used for book burning is shared with the word that connotes the smashing of idols.

It's almost as though the many Torah/ Talmud et al book burnings that we suffered throughout our history at the hands of our enemies was a kind of tit for tat revenge on their part for us having been iconoclasts whose stock in trade it was to smash their objects of veneration and worship... both literally and figuratively. What better way to inflict vicarious pain on the People of the Book than by destroying their books?

But "Libricide" is an even more delicious word. The Latin "cide" suffix means death-dealing as in herbicide, homicide, matricide, suicide, regicide, genocide, fratricide and Deicide. Yet TTBOMK it's only application to the destruction of an entity that was overtly inert and not endowed with life in the first place, is libricide. Whoever it was who first coined this term apparently opined that books are, indeed, endowed with life and vitality and that to destroy them is to have killed something or someone.

Whether conscious or not this idea dovetails nicely with the Torah concept that the highest non-Divine life-form is first and foremost a speaker/communicator. The first human's creation is described as

ז וַיִּיצֶר יְהוָה אֱלֹהִים אֶת-הָאָדָם, עָפָר מִן-הָאֲדָמָה, וַיִּפַּח בְּאַפָּיו, נִשְׁמַת חַיִּים; וַיְהִי הָאָדָם, לְנֶפֶשׁ חַיָּה.

which the Targum Onkelos famously translates as

בְרָא יְיָ אֱלֹהִים יָת אָדָם, עַפְרָא מִן אַרְעָא, וּנְפַח בְּאַפּוֹהִי, נִשְׁמְתָא דְּחַיֵּי; וַהֲוָת בְּאָדָם, לְרוּחַ מְמַלְּלָא.

Mans very life, his "living soul" is identified with his capacity for speech "a speaking spirit/wind". So when we record the communications of human beings through the written word or other media we have, in essence, captured their vitality and soul... far more so than when we paint their portrait or photograph their visage. Thus understood Guttenbergs press was a kind of precursor of human cloning.

And while Jews are innocent of all historical charges of Deicide, "Titus the wicked", sacker of Jerusalem was guilty of attempted or symbolic Deicide. The Parokhes is the curtain in the Temple dividing the inner and outer sanctums. When Titus ran it through with his sword, miraculously, blood began spurting forth. Our sages reveal that Titus was convinced that he had killed G-d. And what was behind the curtain? By the time of the Bayis Sheni nothing but an outcropping of rock. But the inner sanctums holiness originally (in the tabernacle and Solomons Temple) derived from it housing the ark of the covenant(revision HT to Midwest). And what did the ark contain? Why nothing but inscribed tablets and a scroll/book.

It's noteworthy that להבדיל בין עבודת הקודש לעבודה זרה ובין האמת והשקר idolatrous Catholics believing in transubstantiation reiterated their trumped up charges of Deicide later in history with trumped up charges of host desecration. As the medieval woodcuts on the topic illustrate these were, allegedly, replete with stabbing, spurting blood and draining of life force. To me this is an echo of the Talmudic narrative of Titus' desecration.

IIRC It was the Avnei Nezer who explained that the moment that we as a people regained immortality was when kavayokhol G-d handed the Lukhos = tablets to Moshe. The reason being that in the Lukhos the words (soul) being inscribed all the way through rather than "attached" like written or partially inscribed words , are inseparable from the stones /background (body) and the very definition of immortality is a body/soul combination that is inseparable.

Going from the sublime to the ridiculous an infamous letz once said that "I don't want to achieve immortality through my work; I want to achieve immortality through not dying." Very funny. But he was on to something. Within our organization of reality, that is to say prior to the eschatological epoch of the Resurrection of the Dead, we DO associate immortality with ones "work", in particular with the written word. Unseen metaphysics aside how else can a persons influence be felt, and ascribed to the person, posthumously, once all eyewitnesses to his/her life have themselves passed on, except through written or other recorded communications that they left behind?

Our sages tell us

אגורה באהלך עולמים אחסה בסתר כנפיך סלה וכי עלתה על דעתו של דוד שיהא חי וקים לעולמים אלא כך אמר דוד לפני הקב"ה רבונו של עולם אזכה שיהו דברי נאמרין בבתי כנסיות ובבתי מדרשות שמעון בן נזירא בשם ר' יצחק אמר כל תלמיד חכם שאומרים דבר הלכה מפיו בעולם הזה שפתיו רוחשות עמו בקבר שנאמר (שיר השירים ז) וחכך כיין הטוב וגו' דובב שפתי ישינים מה כומר של ענבים זה כיון שמניח אדם אצבעו עליו מיד דובב אף שפתותיהם של צדיקים כיון שאומרין דבר הלכה מפיהם של צדיקים שפתותיהן מרחשות עמהן בקבר

= "I will dwell in Your tent for eternity, I will take shelter in the shade of Your wings Selah" Did David the psalmist truly imagine that G-d would grant his request to live and persist forever? Rather what David was asking was "Master of the Cosmos.. may I merit my words being repeated in Shuls and Yeshivas".

Shimon son of the Nazirite said in the name of Rebbe Yitzkhak: Any (deceased) TK quoted in this world (of the currently living) his lips murmur with him in the grave etc.

and so it follows that to destroy a book is qualitatively different than destroying a building or even a painting. It is libricide. You've destroyed something endowed with life.
Qedusha-Havdala...Have you had YOURS today??? Hmmm???

Biblioclasm Palooza

In the wake of the alleged Lag B'Omer Book burnings of DovBear on the Parsha I've been reading up a bit on the topic of book burning and found a number of things that have piqued my interest so expect several posts on related topics over the near future.

בכל דור ודור עומדים עלינו לכלותנו

Larger image here.
Tomorrow is the 65th anniversary of V.E. Day. (If the calendar converters are to be trusted the 65th anniversary according to our calender falls this year the following day on Sunday= Yom Rishon 25 Iyar).

Let's give credit where credit is due. Despite the posts where I opined that Jewish life in the מדינה של חסד = Country of Altruism, has NOT been an unqualified blessing it would be the height of ingratitude not to feel indebted to the nation, government and army whose entry into the fray of the war in Europe hastened the shortening of the Thousand Year Reich by 988 years.

Although the Soviets invested a lot more in blood and treasure and Britain arguably then lived it's finest hour, who knows how much longer the war and, in particular, the Jew-genocide, would have continued, or if the allies would have prevailed at all, if not for the US committing troops to the war effort? As a G2 I feel this gratitude acutely and realize that it took thousands of lives of allied enlisted men who died young and racked with pain, for my parents z"l to have survived and for me to have ever been born.

The ultimate thanks, of course, is to G-d whom we thank daily נוֹדֶה לָךְ וּנְסַפֵּר תְּהִלָּתֶךָ עַל חַיֵּינוּ הַמְּסוּרִין בְּיָדֶיךָ, וְעַל נִשְׁמוֹתֵינוּ הַפְּקוּדוֹת לָךְ, עַל נִסֶּיךָ שֶׁבְּכָל יוֹם... וָ. . The khokhma elyona decreed how long the killing should last and when the cessation of genocide and general death and destruction should come. Even though the bitter gezerah came the שומר ישראל ית' upheld His end of the covenant never to allow our total destruction nor to substitute another nation for us.

Still, it was the allies who were the שלוחי דרחמנא= the good agents, to deliver us from this latest existential threat and for that I am ineffably grateful. Could more have been done? Could it have been done sooner? In all likelihood the answers are yes and yes. But even so that may be a claim we can lodge in the heavenly court against the State Department and other powerful politicians and statesmen of the WW II era. It has little or nothing to do with the allied soldiers, paratroopers, submariners and sailors who did the actual fighting that brought about the downfall of the Axis war machine in Europe.
Qedusha-Havdala. have you had YOURS today??? Hmmm???

Why Do Bad Things Happen to Silly Books?

or Baiting the Bear Trap part II

Part I

As promised it's now time to bash both the book and it's alleged burners.

IMO DovBear on the Parsha is more of a silly book than a dangerous one. Both those who call it a book of Divrei Torah and those who equate it to a ספר תורה שכתבה מין= a Sefer Torah written by a heretical scribe, err. The former because it lacks the basic Qedusha consciousness and hence, approach to exegesis, to be considered Torah at all, much less to be taken seriously by serious Torah students and the latter because, after a brief perusal, this deficiency is so apparent and overt that it bears nothing in common with ספר תורה שכתבה מין . Such a Sefer Torah is dangerous because it is the metaphysical equivalent of a terrorist sleeper cell. It looks innocuous. It reads like any other Sefer Torah. But because of כח הפועל בנפעל= "the power/ potential of the actor inheres in the object acted upon" it then "sneaks up on you" and blows your Emunah to smithereens . A ספר תורה שכתבה מין is like a registered offender that moved into the neighborhood whose criminal past is unknown to the neighbors. DB on the Parsha is more like a flaming drag queen whose proclivities are over-the-top obvious and who cuts a figure more comical than ominous.

No doubt DB if he ever actually reads the above (I didn't call these two posts Baiting the Bear Trap for nothing) will, no doubt, take deep offense and accuse me of libel and slander not to mention moronic stupidity. Space does not allow me to illustrate the books silliness by citing similarly silly passages available for free in the archives of his blog. But if his Royal mega-J-Blogger-ness deigns to comment here and is a glutton for punishment perhaps it can be arranged in a future post. For now, lets just say that this is my opinion and that silly borderline and perhaps over-the-line deos kozvos = heretical notions and still far better and less threatening than malevolent, sub-textual, subtly evil deos kozvos.

As for the book-burners, if, as Lurker and Mekubal insist, they do indeed exist, it's hard to blast them without knowing them or their precise motives. Still, I will provide a menu of potential points of condemnation and leave it to my two readers to decide which, if any, are applicable to this case:

1. If you hold that DovBears "Torah" is dangerous rather than silly then burning his books is the worst possible strategy and tactic for combating him because you are making him a martyr for the cause of free speech, moderation and/or "Oifgeklerta Torah". By immolating the book that en-wraps the author (see part I) you've created a veritable latter day Rav Khanina ben Tradyon. I wouldn't be surprised if some cub isn't updating the kinah שאלי שרופה באש as we (virtually) speak.

The increased sympathy for him, the spike in traffic for his website and the uptick in sales for his silly book from both simpaticos and those just curious to discover just what the fuss was all about, is counterproductive. Far better to engage him in debate on his blog or, best of all, to utterly ignore him as he has done so effectively to me in my lonely Red-Tent Blog. Serious astronomers do not engage the Flat-Earthers who crashed their convention and proceed to shout their blatherings from the tallest soap-box. The real scientists roll their eyes, ignore the lunatics and move on. Don't be a מחזיק באזני הכלב= one who woke a sleeping dog by schlepping its ears.

2. Acts of kanous are effective when they emanate from hearts that are pure. As I demonstrated here even assuming that it is mutar to hate Beary there is enough reciprocal vicious cycle hatred engendered by כַּמַּיִם, הַפָּנִים לַפָּנִים-- כֵּן לֵב-הָאָדָם, לָאָדָם =As in [a reflecting pools] waters, face answereth [i.e. reflects every move] to face, so the heart of man [responds] to man to spin around. Such that even your (i.e. the book-burners) noble motivations to defend G-d and His Torah have been adulterated with 10-90% contaminants of personal enmity. This ought to have caused you to pause and reflect, stay your hand and do Beary a good turn rather than try to humiliate him.

It reminds me of the classic Novardhoker story; A yeshiva Bokhur is tossing and turning at night on the cold shul bench parched by thirst. First he tells himself "lusty baaal taiveh that you are! You call yourself an Oved HaShem and you can't even resist running out for a drink of water!" A few minutes later he says to himself "Who do you think you're kidding? You think that you conquered your thirst for water??? You just yielded to your atzlus=laziness. You don't feel like venturing out to the town square on a cold winter night and drawing up the pail of water from the well. Get up now and show some zrizus= alacrity!" This internal conversation repeats itself several times until finally the bokhur gets up, goes to the town square where the well is, draws up the pail, brings a dipper to his lips and then... spills the contents of the dipper and the pail back into the well. Then finally he goes back to Shul where he falls into a blissful sleep confident that he's beaten the yetzer hara on two fronts. Similarly, these latter day Pinchos's in Meron and RBS, should have brought along Dovies book, held it out over the bonfire... then withdrawn it.

3. We are all, each and every one of us, Tinokos Shenishbu to a certain degree. The vigor and ubiquity of cultural osmosis is unprecedented in Jewish history. A TK recently told me that the Chazon Ish writes that the Halakhic category of Rasha, for whom hatred is allowed or commanded, has ceased to exist.

4. Even if all of the above are wrong Jew on Jew book violence is disgusting and reprehensible because it evokes the kind of attacks mounted against us by some of the most heinous, scurrilous anti-Semites in history. No good ever accrued to Jews from the many Talmud burnings or even Jew on Jew Rambam /Moreh Nevuchim burnings.

This has never been more true than in the post-Holocaust era. We know that the Nazis SR"Y, the very incarnations of Jew and G-d haters, specialized in book burnings as a harbinger to Jew burnings. As Heinrich Heine prophesied "Wherever they burn books they will also, in the end, burn human beings. ". (PS his books were among those burned by the Nazis). So if the Torah forbade bamos because what the Avos used to worship G-d had been abused by idolaters, If the GR"A ended the custom of decorating Shuls on Shavuos with flora once Tannebaums became the leitmotif of X-mas, then it seems pretty clear to me that we are at a point of history where the burning of heretical material, having been co-opted, overused and abused by our enemies...often as a prelude to burning us, ought to enter the realm of מעיקרא אהובה והשתא שנואה = "initially beloved but now despised and despicable". We know that besides being Genocidal Jew-haters the Nazis were also into some weird religious quasi paganism evocative of pre-X-tian Germanic tribal rites. Perhaps there is something to what one email correspondent described as the vestigial paganism of the lag B'Omer bonfires at least insofar as they get co-opted by book-burners.
(Contact the Guinness Book of World Records people immediately...that has to be the earliest invocation of Godwin's law in recorded Blogging history!)

The greatest sadness of the whole sad affair is neither the silliness of DovBear on the Parsha nor the idiotic, juvenile, malevolent, misguided efforts to burn it. Rather, it is the squandered potential of one as talented as DovBear.

The man is a genius at snark and has a Rashi-like capacity in his writing of achieving מיעוט המחזיק את המרובה= "Containing much in little" or to quote Heine again "Like a great poet, Nature knows how to produce the greatest effects with the most limited means. " or "True eloquence consists in saying all that is necessary, and nothing but what is necessary. ". IMO DB possesses the oh-so-rare talent of true eloquence. There is so much shtus in this world, so much worthy of skepticism and mockery, such a plethora of targets upon which"the Man in the Golden Bear Suit" could have and should have cast his jaundiced eye. That he surrendered to the monotonous spiritual topography of Qeduhsa-Havdala obliviousness, crashing the gates of Mount Sinai and leveling the mountain itself into a flat and boring plain is not merely a likely qefira but a perverse squandering of G-d granted and sweat-equity honed talents. Here's a man who could have single-handedly effected a much needed revolution in frum journalism who perversely squanders his talents on silly "Divrei Torah". I can almost hear the faint echo of the inviting Bas Qol whispering דובבער ... חזור בך ואני ואתה ובן ישי נטייל בגן עדן
Qedusha-Havdala...have you had YOURS today??? Hmmm???

What a Tragedy!

Nosson Nota Deitsch OBM.
You raise a child, are mekahnekh him, pour your heart and soul into him and, poof, in one moment it's over.
May HaShem give strength and comfort to his family, friends and community.
Nichum Avelim info here.

Baiting the Bear Trap

I can resist everything but temptation
- Oscar Wilde

The latest tempest in a teapot roiling the J-Blogosphere (or at least the clubby cliquish portion thereof that garners more hits in 30 minutes than I do in a month) is something that I should stay far away from. In all likelihood this day-late-dollar short post will backfire and only turn my Red-Tent Blog a deeper shade of crimson. Still, I find my weak spirit powerless to resist the siren call of weighing in on a new brouhaha involving the Mega-Blogger who banned me.

I speak, of course, of the alleged burning of DovBear on the Parsha in the Lag B'Omer bonfire in the Holy City of Meron.

First a few Ani Ma'amins:

1. I believe that the incident never occurred and that the images of the burning were photo-shopped. This, despite Lurkers protestations to the contrary. He is either mistaken or hates Dov far more rabidly than I do.

2. I believe that DovBear is NOT responsible for the hoax as a publicity stunt to drum up more orders for his book and/or sympathy for the author. I believe that he believes that the photos were genuine and that, in fact, his works have been immolated as an expression of anger and hatred towards their author.

3. I believe that the Mega-Blogger who first posted the "news" was likewise duped but is innocent of any treachery and/or friendship betrayals of DovBear.

4. I believe that the rules of "There's no such thing as 'bad' publicity" applies to real-world figures NOT to anonymous bloggers.

Now to explain how I arrived at these conclusions:

1. The "numbers don't crunch". It offends reason to believe that the type of person making the Lag B'Omer pilgrimage to Meron would surf the web. Even those relative few that do both would be new-agey, left-leaning types (like the blogger HaMekubal who posted unambiguously in favor of DovBear) who , besides being tech geeks, are also into all things Qabalistic and would hardly be natural enemies of Dov. Finally the images , especially the first of the images, have that semi-amateurish photoshopped look. Moreover, to insert an image of the book in a bonfire photo would not require ordering the book. Whereas actual immolation would require paying good money for the book as they are published and printed on an order to order basis. I am utterly incredulous of anyone plunking down $20+ for the "privilege" of burning the book. Photoshopping is the more frugal and efficient way to go. DovBear...you have taught me well. When I am asked to believe too much my mind recoils. So should yours.

2. DovBear had more literary output in the comment thread following the book-burning post than he normally produces in 2-3 months of posting and commenting on his own blog. The man was obviously and, I might add, understandably cut to the quick and was lashing out like one fighting for their honor and their lives. The book burners come across as fakes, DovBear, OTOH, as passionately genuine.

3. Feeling honestly threatened tends to bring out ones inner paranoid. In his lashing and thrashing about Dov lost all sense of proportion in distinguishing between friend and foe and between possible poor editorial judgment (no slam dunk even on that) and betrayal and treachery. He was a walking, stalking raw nerve / open wound plunged into agony by the minutest grain of salt. It's analogous to being driven to the ER over bumpy pot-holed urban streets while in the throes of a kidney-stone attack (here I speak from personal experience). The pain of the stone makes one hypersensitive to every irregularity on the roadway and to every intrusion on the senses. You hate the driver, you hate the EMT you even hate the music filtering in from the car radios of other motorists.

4. When running a for-profit business or even when selling oneself or ones name 15 minutes of infamy work just as well as 15 minutes of fame and will accrue to equal sales, profits and ego-gratification. But Dov leads a double life. I'd hazard that fewer than a minyan of folks know his true identity. As such he is not only anonymous but eponymous, that is to say as much as he (or for that matter as much as I) exist at all it is only through our published works. When all you are is your blog or book your enemies don't merely burn you "in effigy" i.e. symbolically like some sort of Voo-Doo doll, they have burned you... all the "you" that actually exists. Publicity- shmublicity, DB must have felt as though it was HE who was incinerated.

Stay tuned for part two in which I blast both the book burners and the book.

Remembrance of Bows Past

One Lag B'Omer custom that seems to have gone the way of the steam locomotive is archery. When I was a kid our Day Schools invariably took us on outing to local parks. TTBOMK many khadorim and Yeshiva K'tanos still do this. But it's become more about baseball games than archery.

Do they do archery with your children at their schools on Lag B'Omer?

Party-Pooper

In recent years Lag B'Omer has become more and more like a full blown Holiday. Not attending at least one Madurah= bonfire or taking the kids to a least one "rally" will earn you the kind of sidelong glances previously reserved for those who might skip Qrias HaMegilah on Purim. Then, of course, there are the ever burgeoning crowds that make the annual Lag B'Omer pilgrimage to Meron where Chai Rotel flows freely enough to transform thousands into walking-talking water balloons.

Lag B'Omer is good clean fun. It is particularly enjoyable in that there is no issur melokha and, in spite of societal expectations, no mitzvhas lost for non participation. לפי שאינו דומה מי שיש לו פת בסלו למי שאין לו פת בסלו= "for one can't compare those who must perform with performance anxiety to those who needn't" .

So it is at the risk of throwing a wet blanket, raining on your parade, bursting your bubble and generally pooping the party that I bring to your attention a Teshuva= responsum of the חתם סופר that came as a surprise to me.

The Teshuva in Yoreh deah 233 is chock full of interesting shittos re the sanctity of Eretz Yisrael various cities therein and Jerusalem but, among other things, he writes that he would never make the Lag B'Omer pilgrimage to Tzfas (???? taus sofer or has the custom changed???) for he would feel it imperative to depart from the prevailing minhag of making it a day of rejoicing, lighting bonfires and doing so in a specific place (would he be happier with maduros in Monsey and Los Angeles and the ubiquitous parades sponsored by a Chabad House near you?) rather than merely a day when we skip takhanun and forbid hespedim. "I am not certain", writes the Chasam Sofer, "if it permitted to establish a Moed on a day which no miracle occurred and which is mentioned no where in Sha"s and Poskim as a Moed."(I guess the day lasting longer until Rav Shimon Bar Yokhai finished teaching the Sisrei Torah that would become the Idra doesn't cut it as a Nes. Apparently neither does the fact that the Manna Bread from heaven began falling on Chai Iyar=Lag B'Omer. TTBOMK this date for Manna is the Chasam Sofers' own Khiddush/Kheshbon. )

To me, this sounds very similar to the criticisms we often hear raised against such latter day "holidays" as Yom haAtzmaut, Yom Hashoah V'Hagevurah and Yom Yerushalayim. Living and circulating as I do in RW semi-Kharedi neighborhoods it was hard for me to understand how Lag B'Omer might have something, albeit not everything, in common with those "other" new innovations.

I wonder what the Chasam Sofer would halakhically opine about the annual Rosh HaShanah pilgrimage to Uman. Would he embrace it since Rosh HaShanah is a Moed? Or would he cast a jaundiced eye at turning a place in Khutz L'Aretz into a תל תלפיות שהכל נפנים לשם and the hundreds of thousands of dollars spent on air travel, food and lodging that could be put to more charitable uses. (It is worth pointing out that other Poskim decried an earlier Lag B'Omer custom that involved throwing fine clothes into the Meron madura as being absolute bal tashkhis and a waste of scarce resources that could be used to clothe the poor in Jerusalem.)
Qedusha Havdala- Sometimes it's necessary to distinguish bein Qodesh L'Qodesh!