Hypocrisy

I just came across this post by Ben Chorin.  I found it interesting and I think his point is an important one.  Money quote, "So for my part go right ahead and do aveiros. But please keep your hands off my religion. This is how we do it and if you don't like it, start your own damn religion." 

Aside from that point, which is the most important, something else he said struck a chord with me.  "What it comes down to is that I'm reasonably frum but I'm not at all religious."  This is a very important distinction, and one that isn't always noted in the frum world.  When it is noted, it's to frown on people who are one without the other.  The combination is viewed as essential to proper Yiddishkeit.  I think that this is silly.  The fact is that frumkeit is far more important than religiosity.  It seems to me that there is no essentially Jewish Theology.  People often mention the Rambam's 13 principles as the pillars of Jewish belief, but in most batei midrash you can also find R. Josef Albo's Sefer HaIkarim, which disputes the thirteen principles.  R. Albo was no cofer.  Why does this matter?  I have no idea.  When I've worked out a decent framework for understanding it, I'll let you know.


UPDATE:  By the way, I don't really have an opinion on the women's laining issue, mostly because it doesn't effect me so I don't care at all.  One day I'll have a wife, and she'll make up my mind on issues like that. 

My new mission

Ok, here's what needs to happen.  I need to find a way to watch NBA TV in Montreal.  Why, you ask?  Its very simple.  The last weekend in August, Bill Simmons is programing the station.  Why do I care?  Also simple.  " I already have about two-thirds of my lineup set in stone -- including a Larry Legend 24-Hour Marathon on Sunday."  So please, help me out.  That's 24 hours of Larry Bird!  I can't stress the importence of this more.

Beef

Since I got home about two months ago I've been watching a fair amount of Dawson's Creek which airs at 10:00 and again at 11:00 every weekday morning on TBS.  When the show was first aired, I didn't watch it at all.  I was in high school at the time and not sufficiently secure in my masculinity to watch what is, afterall, a chick show.  Since then I've grown up a bit, and now confess to having a bit of an addiction to the show.  It's appeal comes from two places, I think.  First of all, Shadenfreude.  I love watching those kids agonize through all their little crises.  Second, there is a sort of optimism at the core of the show that I like.  Sure, they whine and moan all the time and they suffer monumentally about the dumbest things, but at the end of the day, there's always that kind of hopeful debriefing where they talk about their problems and find hope.  I like that.  And it doesn't hurt that Katie Holmes is a fox.  Anyway, even though I've been enjoying Dawson's Creek these past few months, there are a few things about it that really bug me.  These are the little, dumb things that always piss me off, so if you aren't a crazy nitpicker, feel free to stop reading now.  First of all, the show takes place on Cape Cod and in Boston.  Despite this, there isn't a single character with a Massachusetts accent.  I've spent plenty of time on the Cape in my life, and let me tell you, the townies have it thick.  Second, there is a huge willow tree in Dawson's front yard.  Trees don't grow that big on Cape Cod.  I remember when I was a kid, whenever my family would go down the Cape my father would always point out the trees.  "Look how skinny they are," he'd say, "That's because the soil is so sandy."  Third, they couldn't go to Fenway?  Not once?  Come on, if you live in Boston the Red Sox are everything come fall.  Even Ally McBeal and The Practice had Fenway episodes.  Finally the ratio of booze to weed when they were in high school.  Maybe it's different on Cape Cod, but where I come from in Suburban Boston it was much easier to get marijuana than for a kid to buy beer.  It could be done,  but it was difficult.  That Pacy kid, who was a drinker in high school, would have been a stoner where I went to school.  And I doubt that it's really all that different on the Cape, particularly with this show's track record on regional accuracy.

Maybe I should change name of this blog to Dorky McDork Dork

I was three years old when Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns first came out in 1987, but I think that it impact on me when I first read it 13 years later was very similar to the impact it had on Batman fans when it first came out.  There is a simple reason for this.  My main exposure to Batman comics had come from a book that my Uncle gave me, Batman from the 30's to the 70's.  It had a cross-section of comics from each decade showing the evolution of the character.  In my mind, as time went on, the books got worse.  Batman started off in the 30's as The Batman, with the article before his name.  He was a scary figure who worked despite, and sometimes against, the police.  The stories were a little heavy handed, but they were written for children, and I was a child when I read them.  As time went on, he lost his edge.  There was an attempt to darken the comic again, in the 70's, but it failed.  And that was all I knew.  I didn't bother to look at newer Batman comics, because I figured they were all in the same mode.  Then a friend showed me Miller's book.  And it blew my mind, the same way I assume it blew the minds of readers when it first came out.

I just reread the book and I have a few more complaints than I did  the first and second times around.  I think that some of the political themes interfere with the main points of the book.  I also think that Miller made a mistake by putting a national crisis at the center of the action, as opposed to a local one.  But Miller got one thing massive, hugely, wonderfully right.  Something that makes my little complaints irrelevant.  He realized something that nobody since Bob Kane (the creator and first author of Batman comic books) has thought of, and he actualized it far better than even Kane (who as a writer was really a second-rate hack) ever did.  It is an idea which is so obvious when you think about it, but somehow eluded half a century of comicbook writers and artists.  Simply put, you have to be a f**king psycho to dress up as a bat and beat up criminals.  Batman, unlike most other superior's, has no superpowers.  Despite this, he goes out night after night after night to fight bad guys.  He never uses a gun.  And he enjoys it.  For this to make any sense at all, the man has to be nutcase.  Miller figured this out, and he made it work.  There is one drawing, on page 78 of the paperback collection, that captures this perfectly.  55 year old Batman just took out an army of punks with the Batmobile (reinvented as a tank).  Their leader, who is younger, stronger and faster than he is, challenges him by calling him a coward.  He thinks for a second, then decides to fight  the gang leader.  The picture, which takes up an entire page, is centered on Batman as he hops out of the Batmobile.  He's grinning like a loon.  He loves this.  And he thinks he's probably going to die.  What makes Batman so fascinating a character, even when written poorly, is exactly that.  His grip on life, and on himself, is always tenuous at best.  His inner beast is always about to escape, and the Bat doesn't care what happens to Bruce Wayne.  When written well, it's astounding.

Apologies and a suggestion

Once again, I want to apologise for my lack of posting for the past few weeks.  I'd like to say I have an excuse, but I don't.  I just haven't had much to say.  That being said, if you ever come over here and don't see anything to read, may I suggest that you click on one of the links to your right.  There are many fine blogs to read, and I have taken the time to point out a few I like.  Hopefully, you will enjoy them too.

Time out for a dork moment

So, it appears that I'm Captain Jean Luc Picard.

That's right, Captain of the Flagship of the Federation, the USS Enterprise 1701-D.  So far as I'm concerned, that's pretty damn cool.

UPDATE:  Forgot to mention, hat tip to my friend Emily, of Just my shorts.

David Ortiz can hit!

3 for 5 with 5 RBI, a triple and a home run.  And now back to your regularly scheduled program.

Give in to the dark side. It calls you.

Zell Miller is speaking at the Republican Convention.  Why doesn't he just switch parties already?  The only reason I can think of is he wants to wait until his term is up, so that his constituants can decide whether they want him as a Republican.  He'll either do that or retire.  There's no chance that the Dems will nominate him again

Theory of Halachic change

Zachary Sholem Berger recently made a comment that I feel compeled to respond to.   In the context of a post on Orthodoxy and Homosexuality he said:

Here I need to admit something ("Today I admit my sins"!). I've never seen a logically consistent exposition of the Orthodox philosophy of halachic change. Maybe I'm ignorant (which is likely), but another possibility is that much of Orthodox resistance to halachic change has to do with a general conservatism rather than a hewing to a set of halachic axioms. (If you show me Rambam's laws of halachic judgment, please tell me how they correspond to today's methods of Orthodox jurisprudence.) There is nothing wrong with this: small-c conservatism is a necessary thing within every religious movement. But such conservatism does not imply an axiomatic consistency. It is this which I think Orthodoxy lacks, no matter how loudly its academicians do protest.

I think he misses the point here. Or more precisely, he gets the point exactly, while missing its ultimate significance.  The lack of a consistant Orthodox theory of halachic change is a symptom of the fact that the historiography of halacha is fundementally ahistorical.  What I mean is, so far as most of the Orthodox world is concerned, Avraham Avinu more or less kept the same Halachot that we do now, and whatever differences there are between his practice and ours disappeared at the time of the Revealation at Sinai.  When Berger says that "Orthodox resistance to halachic change has to do with a general conservatism rather than a hewing to a set of halachic axioms," he isn't entirely wrong, but he isn't entirely right either.  It isn't a simple viceral conservatism that keeps Orthodoxy from changing.  It's that Orthodoxy believes that every detail of the Halacha was revealed to Moses at Sinai.  All we do when we make new P'sak is attempt to apply what we know about Revealation to a new reality.
 
Now, this is a problem, because Halacha has changed over the course of history, which is the reason that many Orthodox Jews feel compelled to form a philosophy of change in Halacha.  I don't think it's really possible, given the current state of Orthodox theology, at least not a prescriptive theory.  At best we can come up with some kind of descriptive theory of how the Halacha developed in different historical periods.  It would not have the kind of "axiomatic consistancy" that Berger craves, but it might be useful to us, the Orthodox community, as presenting ways to approach the adjudication of future Halachic issues.

Happy Bastille Day!

Today is Bastille day, and you know what that means.... Time to bash the French! I don't have anything in particular to say, but I'll link to a few thoughts that belong to other people. One from Mark Steyn, my favorite curmugeonly ex-pat Anglophone Quebecer, and one from Jonah Goldberg. (The Goldberg piece is old, I apologize. But he decided not to write a Bastille day column this year, so I recycled my favorite.)

Signs that I have too much time on my hand

Here's an idea for a new television show. Jason Priestly plays his former character from Bevery Hill, 90210, but he's given up on journalism and gone to law school. He moves to Boston and starts a small law practice where he defends all of the criminals who can't find anybody else to defend them. We could call it Brandon Walsh's Practice. There is so much potential here, I don't even know where to begin. The unintentional comedy factor of repeated Ian Ziering cameos alone would make this show worth watching. He could come to Brandon with legal troubles, and then Brandon could haul him out. Just like 90210, but in court. And if the show ever got in ratings trouble, a regular role for Tiffani Amber Thiessen could be arranged...

Sick and twisted is the only way to be

I just discovered two of the most twistedly hysterical comics that I've seen in a long time. Achewood and Loserz. Check them out.

(Hat tip to Lileks for Achewood, and to my friends Rachel and Cary for Loserz)

Kiruv

Chakira recently posted an introduction to what I presume will be a series of posts on issur negia. He invokes Gila Manolson's book The Magic Touch as an example of a lousy, fallacious attempt to discuss Negia. He also says he hasn't read it. Now, a disclaimer before I continue. I am not Shomer Negia. I never have been. I will not attempt to justify this, as it really isn't justifiable. I am just mentioning it in the interests of full disclosure. In any case, I have read the book and found it unconvincing, for many of the same reasons he did. The key line is "Us orthodox Jews, (as opposed to the people in Aish HaTorah) take umbrage at the idea that the reason that pork is prohibited it because of trichinosis." However, he doesn't really discuss the problem with Aish's ideology and methodology, which The Magic Touch is representative of. Aish HaTorah and other kiruv organizations have one goal. They want to bring people to an halachically observant lifestyle. There is, lehavdil, a certain similarity between the Kiruv organizations and Christian missionary groups. They aren't necessarily concerned with the theological/philosophical implications of their mission, just that the non-believers become believers. Now, what are the implications of Aish type maximizing? I'm going to take The Magic Touch as an example, because it is what we've been looking at so far. Manolson never mentions any halachic reasons for the issur. She doesn't discuss the origins or nature of the prohibition. She doesn't even seem to be interested in them. Instead, she mentions all sorts of benefits one might derive from being shomer negia, some of which may be true. (I'll give her the benefit of the doubt, though I don't think that most of them are.) This is, in my experience, the way that many of the kiruv groups bring people in, because it is effective. My problem with it is that it is a fundamentally dishonest methodology. If you are getting involved in Orthodox Judaism for increased pleasure, I suggest you look in a different direction. There are a number of benefits to the Orthodox life style, but at the end of the day, it is fundamentally about curbing your desires, not for increased pleasure later (which is what books like The Magic Touch subtly imply), but in the service of God. Tricking people into observance by telling them that they'll feel good later does not create true servants of God. I once heard Jerry Samet, a Brandeis University philosophy professor, make an analogy that I think is apt. In the Bible institution of debt slavery the slave serves for 6 years to pay off his debt and then is set free. At the end of his term of service he can choose to remain with his master. The slave has his ear pierced, as a sign of his servitude. Professor Samet suggested that a Jew should be like the slave who has his ear pierced, choosing service to his master with full knowledge of what that implies. A dishonest presentation prevents a person from making an educated choice. That hurts the whole community of believers.

UPDATE: As a completely irrelevent side note, I notice that Chakira was in Sharon, MA this past Shabbos, with Rabbi Klapper's Summer Beit Midrash. I was in Sharon this past shabbos too.... I hope he isn't the Kollel guy who laughed at Danny's lame "Are you my girlfriend now?" joke. That would lower my opinion of him

Apologies

I'm sorry for the lack of posting over the last few days. I've finally found employment, so I'm a bit busier then I was before. I'm going to try to pick up the pace a bit.

Too funny

Watch this with the sound on.

(Link via The Corner)

Invite to convention bloggers

It seems that Patrick Belton will be in Boston for the Democratic convention at the end of the month. Now, I don't usually blog about politics, for the obvious reason that other people do it much better and I don't usually have anything to add. Consequently, I didn't even try to get press credentials, though when I saw that the DNC was giving them out, the idea crossed my mind. Dispite [despite] this, I would love to meet the people who are coming to the convention to blog. So I'd like to extend an invitation to any Shomer Shabbat bloggers to stay by me for that Saturday. My E-mail is Adairian-At-Juno-dot-com. If you know anybody who needs a place, send them to me.

UPDATE: By the way, any other way to meet with convention bloggers would also interest me.

Enjoying the moment

The Red Sox won. The Yankees lost. In the grand scheme of 162 games, this is meaningless. But right now, I can go to bed happy.

Dancing for souls

In Harvard Square today a friend of mine and I saw a troupe of dancers. There was nothing unusual about this in and of itself, there are often street performers in the square. What was strange was that these were missionizing dancers. When my friend and I spoke to them afterwards, one said, "We're on a mission from Texas to show how much Jesus can help you." This strikes me as a particularly strange way to spread the Gospel. The dance was very cryptic, though the basic structure made it clear that it was a story of trials and redemption. The story, as explained to us by the dancers, is that of the creation of a man and a woman and their temptation first by drugs/anger, then by sex and then by sorcery and their final redemption by God/Jesus. It was very difficult to follow, though it was interesting to watch. It was simply so far out that it didn't have any real emotional effect. It's main acheivement was stimulating curiousity. While the show's meaning was explained clearly enough after I asked, I don't know if that is enough to "show how much Jesus loves you." The Jesus idea is such a powerful one, I don't think that intellectual curiousity is enough to bring people in. Do they get many converts? I suppose I should have asked. Really, I'm just talking off the cuff here. As an Orthodox Jew who has no truck with Jesus, I have never experienced anything stronger than intellectual curiousity towards him. Do any of my readers have anything to share?

Brits on leaving

Christopher Hitchens has an interesting article up on Slate about fucking off. Well, not so interesting, but it has one gem of a line: "I once heard the late Sir Kingsley Amis, describing the end of an evening of revelry, saying, "So then—off I fucked."" That is just too precious not to quote.

Somebody else's word of the day

Idiolect. I like it. So I stole it. Now it's my word of the day

International Kissing Day

Just a reminder to you all that International Kissing Day has begun. Don't let it go to waste.

Would you tell the lesbian that you're in love with her?

A frequent topic of conversation between me and a certain friend of mine is confessions of love/romantic interest to friends. Most recently this came up in the context of Kevin Smith's movie Chasing Amy. My friend asked me if I thought that Holden had done the right thing when he confessed his love for Alyssa. The implication, which she later spelled out, was that he had. My response was that, given the way the movie works out, he did the right thing. However, I don't think that it would be the right move in every situation. One of the main issues is the question of honesty versus civility. Is it better to be honest with a friend, even at the potential cost of hurting him/her, or damaging the relationship? Her claim is that it is always better to take the risk, because you never know what the result will be, and if it pays off, it pays off big. Now, I disagree. Sometimes one can be certain what the result will be, or that the consequences of failure aren't worth the chances of success. In the end we both agree that the decision should be based on a risk/reward analysis. She just thinks that the risk is always worth the potential reward. I don't. Sometimes I want to have a girl in my life so badly that it isn't worth potentially alienating her for the slim chance of something better. A thought just occured to me. If I follow this line through to it's logical conclusion, would I only ever make a move on girls I like less, and never end up with the girls I really like? I don't think so, but I'm not sure why. Any thoughts?


UPDATE: My friend E-mailed me with a clarification of her position. Apparently, she wanted to comment, but there is a problem with the comments section of this post. I'll try to fix that, but in the meantime, here are her comments.
I would like to clarify my position in response to your post. If you are 100% sure that telling her would hurt her far more than it would help you then by no means tell her. For instance, madly crushing on a happily married woman is never a good idea. However, with that said, if you like your friend so much that you can’t get her out of your mind and you’re not functioning properly then in most cases I think that the risk is always worth the potential reward. For if she is truly a good friend of yours then the risk of telling her will not be that large. It may be awkward for a little while but she will in no way alienate you from her life. If, in fact, she does then clearly she was not that good of a friend to begin with.

Note to self: One day I promise to take my own advice.

Sincerely,
Your Anonymous Friend (She actually signed it this way.)

UPDATE 2: The comments section is fixed.

Note to self

I do not blog drunk. If you aren't me, I apologize for making you read this.

The smell lingers

My friend Aaron, when I mention my history as a Dungeons and Dragons player, likes to point out that no matter how much time passes girls can still smell D&D on a guy a mile away. Now, I was a nerd, but nowhere near as bad as Chris here. So maybe there is hope for me yet.

Canada Day

I began the day by cursing it, ended it thanking God for the holiday. Winners was closed so I couldn't buy a belt to replace the one I had forgotten to pack. This, naturally, irritated me. The day closed, however, with a stunnning display of fireworks. I love fireworks. I think they are one of the more beautiful accomplishments of mankind. Really, they are an incredible thing, when you think about it. Somebody packs some powder into a tube, sets it on fire and launches it into the air, and it creates something so gorgeous... I love it. In general, once I got over the department store fiasco, it was a sucessful day. I spent time with some people I haven't seen lately, and had a really great night. No complaints at all. I saw a few bands at the Montreal Jazz Festival as well, but I'll save that for another post, when I've collected my thoughts some more.