Category: Jews behaving badly

A lot more osculation of faith at The Free Press

December 24, 2025 • 11:30 am

I’ve often argued that the Free Press is soft on religion, even more so than its MSM equivalent, the New York Times. The editor of the FP, Bari Weiss, is Jewish, and although it’s not clear to me exactly what she believes (is there a God?), you’ll never see her criticizing religion. Her partner, Nellie Bowles, converted to Judaism, (I believe you have to espouse belief for that–a double entendre), and I can’t remember ever reading anything antireligious or pro-atheism on the site. (I may have missed something.) And now the editors have recruited at least four more religionists as part of a long series about religion celebrating America’s 250th anniversary.

There will be monthly paeans to religion for a year, and it may already have been going for a while.  One of the paeans is below: a long, tedious piece about how American required not only the Bible to attain equality of its citizens, but the Old Testament. It’s no accident, of course, that the author, Meir Yaakov Soloveichik, is an Orthodox rabbi.  (More rabbis to come!) The American experiment, he avers, involved the replacement of an earthly king with a heavenly one: God (Yahweh in his case). Well, maybe he was right, but in the end there’s no evidence for a God who makes us all equal. And religion, despite the rabbi’s claim, is waning in America, but the idea of equality remains.

Here’s the editors’ intro to the piece (bolding is mine):

Of all the radical ideas at the heart of the American founding, freedom of religion stands apart. Rarely in human history has a nascent nation rejected religious uniformity and bet instead on liberty, trusting that faiths can live side by side, peacefully and equally. In doing so, America didn’t banish faith, but made room for it to thrive in all its depth and diversity.

For this month’s installment of our America at 250 series, a yearlong celebration of the country’s big birthday, we’re spotlighting faith and how it helped build our nation. You’ll hear from Catholic magazine editor R. R. Reno on how his marriage to a Jewish woman drew him closer to God; from David Wolpe on two towering prophets of history; from Matthew Walther on the kaleidoscope of American religious life; and more.

Today, we kick things off with the great Rabbi Meir Soloveichik, who explains why the flourishing of biblical faith in the new country provided the basis for American equality. For, he writes, “In rejecting monarchy, Americans were not insisting that they had no king, but that their king was God.”—The Editors

If you subscribe, click below to read what the sweating rabbi is trying to say. If you don’t subscribe, well, you have an extra hour to do something fun:

The piece is not particularly well written, and I don’t think it makes its case, but I don’t want to waste time doing an exegesis of this. I just want to show how the Free Press keeps highlighting the benefits of faith—in this case historical ones—over and over again. And I’ll omit all the well-known stuff about the role of religion in the Continental Congress (objections to prayers, etc.) But here’s what the piece says about the Jewish foundation of Americ (all quotes are indented).

John Adams wrote that evening [in 1771] to his wife: “I never saw a greater Effect upon an Audience. It seemed as if Heaven had ordained that Psalm to be read on that Morning. I must beg you to read that Psalm.” A passage from the Hebrew Bible, describing a divine defense from one’s enemies, so united the members of the new Congress that it seemed heaven-sent.

For the Catholic philosopher Michael Novak, this anecdote highlights the prominent role played by the stories, imagery, and ideas of Hebrew scripture in the American revolution. In contrast to Christian texts, which are devoted to describing a kingdom that is “not of this earth,” the tale of biblical Israel is all about a polity that is very earthly indeed. Thus, as Novak noted in On Two Wings, his account of the role of faith in the American founding, “practically all American Christians erected their main arguments about political life from materials in the Jewish Testament.” The story of the Jews offered early Americans a tale from which they could find inspiration in their own crisis.

It also offered another advantage. Focusing on Judaic texts allowed the revolutionaries to avoid exegetical issues pertaining to Christian theology. “Lest their speech be taken as partisan,” Novak added, “Christian leaders usually avoided the idioms of rival denominations—Puritan, Quaker, Congregationalist, Episcopal, Unitarian, Methodist, and Universalist. The idiom of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob was a religious lingua franca for the founding generation.” As a means of uniting the diverse group, Novak continues, “the language of Judaism came to be the central language of the American metaphysic—the unspoken background to a special American vision of nature, history, and the destiny of the human race.” Psalm 35 would serve as a symbol of the fact that patriots across America could indeed pray together.

Here it’s not just religion that was the bedrock foundation of America, but Old Testament Judaism.  Of course, the vast majority of Americans when the country was founded were Christians, and presumably accepted the Jesus stories, but this shows how historians can emphasize some stuff as opposed to other stuff to make their case

And here’s how Thomas Paine, himself an atheist, nevertheless foisted “belief in belief” on Americans in his influential pamphlet Common Sense. “Belief in belief”—the view that it’s good for the “little people” (Americans) to believe in God even if the intellectuals don’t—seems to be the point of view pushed by the Free Press, and, to me, explains why they don’t publish articles that dismantle belief. But I digress.

Paine privately denied the reality of revelation and scorned scripture as fantasy. (He would later voice his views on religion in The Age of Reason, ruining his reputation in America.) But America was a biblically literate land, and with Benjamin Rush’s help, Paine wrote for his audience in Common Sense. The pamphlet—probably the most influential published polemic in the history of the world—changed the way in which Americans regarded their king and monarchy in general.

The essence of Paine’s argument is easy to miss today. In rejecting monarchy, Americans were not insisting that they had no king, but that their king was God. “But where, says some, is the King of America?” Paine asks in Common Sense; “I’ll tell you Friend, he reigns above, and doth not make havoc of mankind like the Royal Brute of Britain.” Not all patriots approved of the pamphlet; John Adams thought its arguments overwrought and exaggerated. But Paine spoke for the many whose own sentiments were evolving. Subjects who had once revered their king were beginning to conclude that the texts of ancient Israel pointed to a new way of seeing themselves.

The tale of America is not merely that of a break with Britain; it is equally a tale of a group of colonists who came to conclude that their equality derived from the monarchy of the Almighty.

There’s more:

But the fact remains that shorn of biblical faith, no cogent explanation can be given for the doctrine of equality that lies at the heart of the American creed. Indeed, the other sources of antiquity to which the Founders turned for inspiration—the philosophers of Greece and the statesmen of Rome—denied human equality and held a worldview that there were those destined to rule and others born to serve. As the Yale legal scholar Stephen L. Carter reflected in Civility: Manners, Morals, and the Etiquette of Democracy, to this day “faith in God provides a justification for the equality that liberal philosophy assumes and cherishes but is often unable to defend.”

This is bushwah. Of course a cogent nonreligious argument can be given for the doctrine of equality that lies at the heart of the American creed. Read any ethical philosopher (John Rawls is one example), or read the article on “Eauality” in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, where the word “God” appears precisely once, and only in a discussion of how Christianity espoused an equality of humans before God.

But even if this historical interpretation be true, as Americans become more and more either atheists or “nones” (those not affiliated with a specific church or faith), the rationale for equality would seem to have disappeared. It hasn’t, because we now base it on humanism, not religion. If you stopped someone in the street and asked Americans why all people are equal before the law, I doubt they say “because that’s what the Old Testament dictates.” They may mutter something about all men being created equal from the Declaration of Independence, but philosophers who give us a rational basis for equality rely not on Divine Command but on secular arguments.

At the end, Rabbi Soloveichik raises the new canard that the waning of religion in America has slowed. They make a great deal about the plateau shown below:

Europeans may wonder at the way our politics is consumed by a culture war that is linked to differences regarding religion, but these debates endure in America because, unlike the largely secular continent across the ocean that was once the cradle of Christendom, faith continues to matter to so many millions of Americans. Even the much-discussed contemporary phenomenon known as the rise of the “nones”—Americans who do not belong to a faith at all—seems to have slowed. Few Americans today know the final lyrics of “My Country ’Tis of Thee,” but when God is invoked in our public life, it is meant to remind us of the unique way equality emerged in America, the way religion impacted how Americans came to see themselves.

As we mark America’s 250th anniversary, it is impossible to know with any certainty what the next decades will bring for our country. But looking back on the past, one prediction can be safely made. Religion in America has always defied the predictions of its demise, and on the 300th birthday of the United States, there will be citizens of this country who will rejoice in their equality—and thank the almighty monarch of America for it.

Mind you, religiosity hasn’t reversed its long-term trend of decreasing; it just has hit a plateau.  Here’s a graph from the Pew article cited by the rabbi:

BUT that goes back to only 2007, and deals only with Christianity. (I bet Islam would show growth.) Let’s take a longer view, looking at Pew data from 1972 to about 2021.  Christianity has fallen nearly 30%, and if you looked way back to the turn of the 20th century, I bet you’d see a much bigger decline. The “plateau” touted above—believers never mention the long term—is just a small segment of the graph, and while religion may increase or remain static, that’s not the long-term trend. In the meantime, “nones” have increased nearly sixfold, and other religions just a tad. Nope, the rabbi’s huzzahs ring hollow.

Look again at the last sentence:

But looking back on the past, one prediction can be safely made. Religion in America has always defied the predictions of its demise, and on the 300th birthday of the United States, there will be citizens of this country who will rejoice in their equality—and thank the almighty monarch of America for it.

That’s bogus.  There are two predictions that can be made. The first is the rabbi’s obvious one: America will always have some religious people. Yes, faith is sadly still alive, and we’ll have to wait a few centuries until we become like Sweden or Iceland. But the more important prediction is that faith is waning. It ain’t dead yet, but it’s dying. Even so, Americans still espouse equality.

It’s time for the Free Press to publish some stuff about unbelief, its increase over time, and the reasons for it.

I couldn’t help myself. I asked ChatGPT to illustrate some early Americans worshipping God as a king. Not bad, eh?

Bernie Sanders prepares resolutions to punish Israel

September 26, 2024 • 9:30 am

Forgive me if I put up two pieces on Israel’s wars today (i’m not sure what I’ll write about next), but it’s not only on my mind, it’s the main news besides the American election. (See the daily “Nooz” for this other stuff).

I don’t like to use the words “self-hating Jew,” for I don’t think that an anti-Semitic Jew can really hate himself or herself. (Yes, there are anti-Semitic Jews: who do you think runs “J Street” and “Jewish Voice for Peace?”).  I prefer “Jew-hating Jew,” and although that may seem a bit harsh when applied to Bernie Sanders, he has repeatedly taken actions against the state of Israel. It’s not because he hates Netanyahu, though I’m sure he does, but because he seemingly doesn’t favor the existence of the state of Israel. In other words, he’s an anti-Zionist, which to me equates to “anti-Semite,” ergo my characterization.

Again, I know some readers will disagree, but right now I think it’s the moral duty of the U.S. to help our closest ally in the Middle East—the only democracy in the Middle East—and fight against the terrorism of Hamas and Hezbollah. Given that the Israeli Army has taken great care not kill civilians as far as they can help it, and has produced one of the lowest civilians killed/Hamas terrorists killed in the history of warfare, there is no reason to decry Israel for a “disproportionate response” to being attacked by Hamas. For crying out loud, everyone agreed with Israel at the war’s outset that Hamas had to be eliminated after the butchery of last October 7. But when Israel tried to do that, and tried to avoid killing civilians, the world screamed “genocide” in response. It’s crazy.

So now, according to PBS, Bernie has prepared a resolution reducing American arms sales to Israel, just when it needs them to defend itself against Hezbollah as well. Click to read the PBS article.

An excerpt:

Sen. Bernie Sanders is preparing several resolutions that would stop more than $20 billion in U.S. arms sales to Israel, a longshot effort but the most substantive pushback yet from Congress over the devastation in Gaza ahead of the first year anniversary of the Israel-Hamas war.

In a letter to Senate colleagues on Wednesday, Sanders said the U.S. cannot be “complicit in this humanitarian disaster.” The action would force an eventual vote to block the arms sales to Israel, though majority passage is highly unlikely.

“Much of this carnage in Gaza has been carried out with U.S.-provided military equipment,” Sanders, I-Vt., wrote.

As the war grinds toward a second year, and with the outcome of President Joe Biden’s efforts to broker a cease-fire deal and hostage release uncertain, the resolutions from Sanders would seek to reign in Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s assault on Gaza. The war has killed some 41,000 people in Gaza after the surprise Oct. 7 Hamas-led attack that killed about 1,200 people in Israel, and abducted 250 others, with militants still holding around 100 hostages. [JAC: Where, PBS, did you get that figure, and how many of them were Hamas fighters?]

While it’s doubtful the politically split Senate would pass the measures, the move is designed to send a message to the Netanyahu regime that its war effort is eroding the U.S.’s longtime bipartisan support for Israel. Sanders said he is working with other colleagues on the measures.

Key Senate Democrats have been pushing the Biden administration to end the Israel-Hamas war and lessen the humanitarian crisis, particularly in Gaza, where people’s homes, hospitals, schools and entire Palestinian families are being wiped out.

I would ask Senator Sanders and all of his running dogs in the Senate, as well as the Israel-hating “squad” in the House, this question: “How do YOU propose to wipe out Hamas and end its terrorism if you put shackles on Israel, and, especially, call for a cease-fire that leaves Hamas in power?”

Yes, I know that we don’t know what will happen after Hamas is defeated, as it will be, but as I recall, when the war began, everyone agreed with Israel that Hamas needed to be extirpated. But when Israel started doing that, and civilians died (put most of their deaths at the door of Hamas), they decided that no, Israel cannot be allowed to win this war. And if Israel doesn’t win, Hamas’s terrorism will continue (remember, Hamas vowed to repeat October 7 over and over and over again).

So, it galls me endlessly when the “progressives” like Sanders conveniently neglect several facts:

  1.  Israel is not committing genocide in the Middle East.  The people who are doing so include Hamas, Hezbollah, and Bashar al-Assad of Syria, who has killed off 600,000 of his own people, apparently bent on a genocide of Syrians.  It’s clear that the terrorists want to wipe out Jews and the state of Israel, and that is genocide. It is not true that Israel’s aim is to wipe out all Palestinians. If they wanted to, they could have done so at any time in the last 50 years. They even gave Gaza to the Palestinians.
  2. If there was a permanent cease-fire and the war ended now, it would leave Hamas in power. That would guarantee that their terrorism against Israel would continue indefinitely along with their oppression of the people of Gaza. Hamas is an odious, murderous, theocratic, and hateful regime.
  3. Half of the death toll Sanders and everyone gives probably includes Hamas fighters, and of course those figures are provided by Hamas.  The ratio of civilians killed to Hamas soldiers killed is roughly between 1.3:1 and 1:1—very low for warfare and especially low for urban warfare. Remember that Hamas puts its weapons and rockets under schools, in hospitals and Gazan homes, and even in humanitarian zones. Why? I think nobody doubts that it is in Hamas’s expressed interest to ensure that Gazan civilians are killed to secure the world’s hatred of Israel.  So “40,000” is not the figure you want to bandy about.
  4. The “humanitarian” crisis in Gaza has been greatly exaggerated because tons more food is being delivered now than a few months ago. If Gazans are starving, it’s because Hamas is commandeering humanitarian aid. (I don’t think anybody doubts this. either)  Yes, a lot of Gazan infrastructure has been destroyed, but put that again at the door of Hamas.

If Sanders really wanted to do something constructive, he could pass a resolution hauling Hamas and Hezbollah before the International Court of Justice for genocide. But of course neither he nor anybody else will do that.

It’s clear that the “progressive” Left in America is palpably against Israel in this war, decrying it constantly but almost never mentioning the war crimes of Hamas and Hezbollah. The Democratic “squad” in the House, including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, and their allies, are part of this anti-Israel brigade. And I’m fairly certain that, if elected, Kamala Harris would join right in. That won’t make me vote for Trump, but I was certain, when I voted for Biden four years ago, that he would never become “woke”, for he vowed to “reach across the aisle.”  I was wrong.  And I’m pretty sure that Harris will be even more “progressive,” which is why Russia is trying to sabotage the U.S. elections in favor of Trump. (Their consideration is, of course, largely Ukraine.)

At any rate, opposition to Israel in the war is fueled by lies and misinformation, and, if I wanted to be cynical, I’d say that Bernie. his colleagues, and the Squad could care less if the state of Israel disappeared. And without US aid, it might.

One more comment, this one directed especially at Thomas “I Am a Moron” Friedman at the NYT. (See his latest column.) I’ll put it in caps: A TWO-STATE SOLUTION IS NOT THE “SOLUTION” TO THE WAR OR  THE EMNITY BETWEEN ISRAEL AND HAMAS.  The Palestinians don’t want such a solution (they’ve rejected it repeatedly, for what they want is a one-state solution that eliminates Israel), nor do the Israelis, who now realize that a Palestinian state abutting their own will subject them to constant terrorism. The two-state “solution” can be possible only if there are honest brokers and Palestinian leaders who truly want their people to thrive (I don’t see Netanyahu as an “honest broker” in this respect.)

Such a solution  if possible, is decades away. So people who propose such a “solution” are deeply ignorant of history. And that includes Bernie Sanders, who seems superannuated to me.

National news about the protest

May 1, 2024 • 10:30 am

Everybody now knows about the issues at Columbia University, and that the NYPD has cleared the occupied building of protestors and arrested them, with the administration threatening to expel those who were arrested. As I predicted, violence is beginning to erupt around the encampments, but now in some places it’s spread from the pro-Palestinian side (which has already enacted violence by invading buildings, injuring workers, and so on) to the pro-Israeli side, and I can’t abide violence coming from the ideological side I identify with. More below:

But first, as the Hindustan Times reports, a Jewish woman at Penn was told “she was too ugly to be raped”.

A shocking video of a woman allegedly venting her anger against the Israel government in front of a Jewish woman has gone viral. In the insensitive video an old white woman, holding a Palestine flag walks up to girl and shouts on her face saying, “Jewish women are too ugly to be raped…maybe with a condom.” It’s then that she is pulled by other women and taken away.

Here’s the video of that.  And yes, this is about the sexual violence on October 7, which some people still deny.

That’s bad enough, but this is worse. The same article reports that a Jewish woman at UCLA was beaten up by “pro-Hamas students”:

In another video a young Jewish woman was beaten unconscious by pro-Hamas students at the UCLA campus in California today.

Video of her bleeding head after being hit has gone viral. She was hospitalized with a concussion after being ganged up on by at least five student protesters.

Here’s the tweet. There’s a shot of her bloody head at the end:

Perhaps in response, the Jewish students at UCLA attacked the pro-Palestinian encampment, and that is not something I favor at all. Even someone getting beaten up like this should not promote a delayed and violent response.  The attack on the Jewish woman, which was reprehensible, should have been reported to both the cops and the university, and UCLA should expel or sanction the perpetrators and consider removing the illegal encampment if it’s promoting violence. But attack it or its residents? No.

Here’s a Twitter video of Jewish students attacking the protestors. I didn’t see anybody getting physically assaulted, but the report below implies that that happened later.

 

I’m afraid this kind of violence is going to happen on our campus as well. So far things have been relatively peaceful, but I fear that the demonstrators will get increasingly restive if their demands aren’t meant. Here I’m not worried about the Jewish students, whom I know; and I’ve not seen a sign of violence in them. Their actions have been peaceful.

Some of this is reported on Fox 59 News.

Dueling groups of protesters clashed Wednesday at the University of California, Los Angeles, grappling in fistfights and shoving, kicking and using sticks to beat one another.

The clashes at UCLA took place around a tent encampment built by pro-Palestinian protesters, who erected barricades and plywood for protection — while counter-protesters tried to pull them down. Video showed fireworks exploding over and in the encampment. People threw chairs and at one point a group piled on a person who lay on the ground, kicking and beating them with sticks until others pulled them out of the scrum.

After a couple of hours of scuffles, police wearing helmets and face shields formed lines and slowly separated the groups. That appeared to quell the violence. Officers from the California Highway Patrol also appeared to be there. The university said it had requested help.

UCLA campus police and medical personnel had showed up briefly at the scene before retreating, Nexstar’s KTLA reported.

The Jewish students also lobbed fireworks into the encampment; again, a terrible move. As my friend Rosemary said, “Jewish students need to find creative and non-violent ways to end the encampment.”  My view is that Jewish students should use violence only when it’s necessary to defend themselves against violence from others.

Apparently the clashes continued until the police arrived:

I can’t advise the protestors in illegal encampment on campus, but I would advise Jewish or pro-Israeli people to respond as Jews have responded historically to confrontation: use words all you want to defend yourself, but violence must be reserved only for when you are attacked by others.  The parallel with the Gaza/Hamas war is obvious.

h/t: Rosemary Alles

An Israeli Jew rejects “Why Evolution is True”

September 16, 2023 • 12:00 pm

My book Why Evolution is True has been translated into 18 languages, and one of them was Hebrew. I was pleased about that because many Orthodox Jews are Biblical creationists and I wanted them to at least have a shot at learning about the evidence for evolution.

In fact, I know of at least two American Orthodox Jews who accepted evolution (but then left the faith and were expelled by their families!) after reading the English version of the book.  They both told me they had no regrets. (I met them both at Randi’s The Amazing Meeting some years ago.)

Now that a Hebrew version is out, one of my Israeli readers managed to get two copies of it (not easy to procure!) and sent me this tale this morning:

I showed your (Hebrew edition) book to an intelligent young Jewish man living opposite me – he looked about 17 – 18 years old.

He is a student and shortly going to college.

He claimed he was happy with the ‘truth’ that the earth is less than 6,000 years old, and why would he want to consider anything that would detract from his ‘happiness’?

I suggested the possibility that his truth might not be the truth, but he rejected that possibility out of hand. His truth was most definitely the true truth..!

I offered to lend him the book for a few days but he politely refused, saying he had much preparation for college.

There are a lot of orthodox Jews in my area, and I’m considering delivering an A4 leaflet, English on one side, Hebrew on the other, with a basic explanation of Big Bang, stars formation, nucleosynthesis, planet formation, life, us.

But now wonder if such an action will result in unhappiness……?

It seems such a shame that otherwise intelligent humans are so far removed from aspects of critical thinking in their lives…

p.s.  the young student even went as far as saying you are not a ‘real’ Jew for even publishing such a book…!

And that, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, friends and comrades, is why I am sad every time I see a child being brought up as an ultra-Orthodox Jew. Am I a “real” Jew?  I’ll let others decide on their own. I’m certainly not a “religious” Jew, but you know the old joke:

Q; What do you call a Jew who doesn’t believe in God?
A: A Jew.

And as for the truth making them unhappy, well, they can always reject it.

(Remind me to tell you the story about the edition in Arabic.)

NYT touts religion again: this time it’s Judaism

July 3, 2023 • 9:15 am

Every Sunday we get a paean to Christianity by Tish Harrison Warren, and yesterday we read Conservative Rabbi David Wolpe touting the advantages of Judaism—and of religion in general.  Wolpe isn’t as irritating as the  smarmy Warren, who provides only bromides. Wolpe seems like a nice and caring guy, and I’m sure he’s brought solace to many in his rabbinical duties. He’s also had his own tribulations: two surgeries for a brain tumor as well as lymphoma.  But can’t the NYT occasionally produce columns in praise of atheism and humanism? After all, there’s no good evidence for a God, and yet that viewpoint is resolutely ignored by the paper, which publishes piece after piece by people who think not only that there is a God, but a specific kind of God, like the Christian one (e.g., Warren).

According to Wikipedia, Wolpe is infamous among conservative Jews for questioning the historicity of the Old Testament:

On Passover 2001, Wolpe told his congregation that “the way the Bible describes the Exodus is not the way it happened, if it happened at all.” Casting doubt on the historicity of the Exodus during the holiday that commemorates it brought condemnation from congregants and several rabbis (especially Orthodox Rabbis). The ensuing theological debate included whole issues of Jewish newspapers such as The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles and editorials in The Jerusalem Post, as well as an article in the Los Angeles Times. Critics asserted that Wolpe was attacking Jewish oral history, the significance of Passover and even the First Commandment. Orthodox Rabbi Ari Hier wrote that “Rabbi Wolpe has chosen Aristotle over Maimonides, theories and scientific method over facts”. Wolpe, on the other hand, was defended by Reform Rabbi Steven Leder from the Wilshire Boulevard Temple, who argued that “defending a rabbi in the 21st century for saying the Exodus story isn’t factual is like defending him for saying the earth isn’t flat. It’s neither new nor shocking to most of us that the earth is round or that the Torah isn’t a history book dictated to Moses by God on Mount Sinai.”

Wolpe asserted that he was arguing that the historicity of the events should not matter, since he believes faith is not determined by the same criteria as empirical truth. Wolpe argues that his views are based on the fact that no archeological digs have produced evidence of the Jews wandering the Sinai Desert for forty years, and that excavations in Israel consistently show settlement patterns at variance with the Biblical account of a sudden influx of Jews from Egypt.

In March 2010, Wolpe expounded on his views saying that it was possible that a small group of people left Egypt, came to Canaan, and influenced the native Canaanites with their traditions. This opinion is, in fact, shared by the majority of historians and biblical scholars. He added that the controversy of 2001 stemmed from the fact that Conservative Jewish congregations have been slow to accept and embrace biblical criticism. Conservative rabbis, on the other hand, are taught biblical criticism in rabbinical school.

It’s to Wolpe’s credit that he accepts the historical and archaeological evidence against the Exodus. As he says below, he thinks that religion isn’t really about “a set of beliefs to one assents.” He’s wrong, of course. Maybe that’s true for Wolpe, but why would there have been a controversy about the Exodus if some people didn’t adhere to the Old Testament claims? But I’m getting ahead of myself.  I’ll just add that you may know Wolpe from  his several debates about religion with Christopher Hitchens. Here’s one about the existence of God. (Note: it’s 90 minutes long.)

Click on the headline below to read, and you can find the piece archived here

This column seems to serve as Wolpe’s swan song: his retirement thoughts on the human condition and how it’s ameliorated by religion, which to him serves as a kind of social glue. (Wolpe’s statements are indented.)

For over a quarter century now, I have listened to people’s stories, sat by their bedsides as life slipped away, buried their parents, spouses and sometimes their children. Marriages have ended in my office, as have engagements.

I have watched families as they say cruel, cutting things to one another or, just as devastating, refuse to say anything at all. I have seen the iron claw of grief scrape out the insides of mourners, grip their windpipes, blind their eyes so that they cannot accept the mercy of people or of God.

After 26 years in the rabbinate, as I approach retirement, I have come to several realizations. All of us are wounded and broken in one way or another; those who do not recognize it in themselves or in others are more likely to cause damage than those who realize and try to rise through the brokenness.

This is what binds together a faith community. No religious tradition, certainly not my own, looks at an individual and says: “There. You are perfect.” It is humility and sadness and striving that raises us, doing good that proves the tractability of the world and its openness to improvement, and faith that allows us to continue through the shared valleys.

Well, I’ve never been a member of a “faith community,” even a Jewish one, but it seems to me that what binds a faith community together is a desire to belong to a tribe which whose members care for each other. That, plus the factors that make a tribe a tribe: shared beliefs.  Jews can never be members of a Christian faith community because they don’t think the Messiah ever came back. Nor can Muslims be members of either community because they think the Qur’an is the final and correct faith, and Muhammad is the prophet.  And that brings us to Wolpe’s misguided claim about religion not being about a “set of beliefs”:

I have had a privileged view of the human condition, and the essential place of religion on that hard road. Sometimes it seems, for those outside of faith communities, that religion is simply about a set of beliefs to which one assents. But I know that from the inside it is about relationships and shared vision. Where else do people sing together week after week? Where else does the past come alive to remind us how much has been learned before the sliver of time we are granted in this world?

Yes, religion is about the solace of being a member of a community. But, for most, it’s also about shared beliefs, something I discuss in Faith versus Fact.  Does a Christian community have any meaning if the members don’t accept the fact that Jesus came to earth as God/son of God, was crucified, and thereby gave us the possibility of eternal life?  Are Muslims not a community because they all accept the tenets of the Qur’an, dictated to Mohamed by an angel? In fact, Islam is not just a religion, but a way of life—a way of life based on shared beliefs about empirical circumstances. And so it goes for many religions: without accepting at least the existence of a divine being, most religions—and all Abrahamic religions—center largely on “a set of beliefs to one assents.”

Now as a heterodox rabbi Wolpe may indeed reject a conventional god. As he says in the debate below, he defines his god as something quite nebulous:

“God is the source of everything that exists, and God is someone, something, with whom a human being can have a relationship, and that you can live your life in alignment with a godly purpose. That any definition that is greater than that is in some ways to traduce God.”

But he has no right to pronounce on what religion is about for everyone else! And there’s ample evidence that he’s wrong.

In some ways, Wolpe’s claims are a final defense against the increasing secularization of America, which he mentions twice. Pushing back against that, he sees religion as, without question, a net good:

I know the percentage of those who not only call themselves religious but also find themselves in religious communities declines each year. The cost of this ebbing of social cohesion is multifaceted. At the most basic, it tears away at the social fabric. Many charities rely solely on religious institutions. People in churches and synagogues and mosques reliably contribute more to charities — religious and nonreligious — than their secular counterparts do. The disunity that plagues us in each political cycle is also partly because of a loss of shared moral purpose which people once found each week in the pews.

If lack of religion “tears away at the social fabric,” especially because religions promote charities, then you’d expect that atheistic countries would have a badly torn social fabric.  The evidence is against that—at least the evidence from Scandinavia, where government has simply taken over the care of sick people, old people, disabled people, and poor people. There is no lack of charity in Sweden, Denmark, Norway, or other countries. (And virtually every European country has government-provided health care.)

Of course Wolpe doesn’t mention the bad things that religion does—things that Hitchens eloquently mentions in the debate above. Why are Jews demonized by many in the U.S., something mentioned by Wolpe in this article? It’s because they’ve inherited the legacy of being “Christ killers.” Why do Muslims and Jews battle each other to the death? Religion. Why did Hindus and Muslims kill each other during India’s partition in 1947, and continue to do so today? Religion, of course.  Now you can say that without religion people would find other reasons to kill each other and form tribes. That may be true, but religion is perhaps the greatest cause of tribalism in the history of the world, and I’m pretty sure that, had it never arisen, the world would be a better place.

Wolpe paints the Old Testament, even if it be fictitious, as a source of solace:

I still believe the synagogue is a refuge for the bereaved and provides a road map for the seeker. I have been moved by how powerful the teachings of tradition prove to be in people’s lives, helping them sort out grievances from griefs, focusing on what matters, giving poignancy to celebrations. The stories of the Torah, read year after year, wear grooves in our souls, so that patterns of life that might escape us become clear. Sibling rivalries and their costs are clear in the story of Jacob and Esau, Joseph and his brothers. The consequences of kindness emanate from the book of Ruth. We share unanswerable questions with Job and passion with the Song of Songs. The Torah acts as a spur and a salve.

But so do many other nonreligious works! If the Torah is more efficacious than these works, it’s because people believe those stories, something Wolpe says they don’t do. Otherwise, sibling rivalries, kindness, and questioning can be found in gazillions of nonreligious works of fiction and nonfiction. And, as reader Leo (who sent me this link) noted, “I guess he wants us to ignore the Bible stories about slavery, war, genocide, etc.”

In his last paragraph, Wolpe again claims that religion is a bulwark against creeping secularism and the social damage it apparently causes:

Religion may be on the decline in this country and in the West, but if you wish to see the full panoply of a human life, moments of ecstatic joy and deepest sorrow, the summit of hopes and the connections of community, they exist concentrated in one place: your local house of worship.

Well, they also exist concentrated in a better place: your local library.

Rabbi’s NYT op-ed misleadingly claims that Jews recognized six genders

March 21, 2023 • 10:15 am

Here we have another example of what I call the “reverse appeal to nature”, except that it’s a “reverse appeal to Judaism”. The former trope goes like this, “What my ideology says is good is what I must find in nature.” That is, if you’re a gender activist, you must argue that since there is no sexual binary in humans (a false assertion, of course), then there is no sexual binary in animals in general (another false assertion).

Here we have a subspecies of that bias evinced by a Jewish rabbi and gender activist, who claims that Judaism has long recognized a whole range of genders—six, to be exact.  This is also false, for the “genders” adduced by rabbi Elliot Kukla, a transgender man, are not socially enacted sex roles but what doctors call “disorders of sex development”( DSDs): very rare conditions when the development of sexual characteristics goes wrong (DSDs, despite Anne Fausto-Sterling’s claim, are not “new sexes”). These ancient Jewish categories do not correspond to the kind of genders people recognize today—and Rabbi Kukla admits it.  The fallacy here is imposing onto one’s historical religion what what sees as good today: the recognition and approbation of different genders. (Unlike biological sex, which comes in only two forms in humans, genders can be multifarious, as they are social roles or identities assumed by biological males or females.) Somehow the Rabbi thinks it gives succor to the social justice movement to show that Jews recognized people who were victims of sex-trait development gone awry.

The article identifies Kukla as “a rabbi who provides spiritual care to those who are grieving, dying, ill or disabled. He is working on a book about grief in a time of planetary crisis.” Wikipedia also notes that he’s “the first openly transgender person to be ordained by the Reform Jewish seminary Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in Los Angeles.”

Read his op-ed by clicking on the screenshot below, or you can find an archived copy here for free.

There are two issues with Kukla’s article, both involving misleading data. The first one involves transgender people have higher rates of suicide due to oppression or misgendering. But none of the data he adduces shows that “oppression” of transgender people, or calling them by the wrong pronoun, actually causes their suicide.  Here are a couple of his statements:

Over the past few years there have been countless stories in the news of trans and nonbinary young people’s deaths by suicide. In San Diego, a 14-year-old, Kyler Prescott, died after being repeatedly misgendered by hospital staff members in the psychiatric unit that was supposed to be helping him. Leelah Alcorn, a 16-year-old transgender girl from Ohio, was rejected by her parents after coming out. In her online suicide note she wrote, “The only way I will rest in peace is if one day transgender people aren’t treated the way I was.”

More than half of young people in the United States who are transgender and nonbinary seriously considered suicide in the past year, according to a survey conducted by the Trevor Project, a suicide prevention organization for L.G.B.T.Q. youth. This figure is staggering, but the Trevor Project’s data also points to what can help. The same 2022 survey found that trans and nonbinary youth who report having their pronouns respected by all or most of the people in their life attempted suicide at half the rate of those who didn’t. And a 2019 Trevor Project survey found that transgender and nonbinary young people who live with even one accepting adult were 40 percent less likely to report a suicide attempt in the previous year.

A 2021 study published by The Journal of Adolescent Health found that for people younger than 18, receiving gender-affirming hormone therapy was associated with nearly 40 percent lower odds of having had a suicide attempt in the previous year. It’s not being transgender or nonbinary that kills young people; it’s the shunning, lack of acceptance and transphobia they encounter in the struggle to be who they truly are.

Now it’s certainly true that some transgender people are driven to suicide by ill-treatment from others, but we have to realize that the incidence of mental illness and suicidality among transgender people is sky-high to begin with, and the desire to change genders may be one solution people see to their mental problems. If they’re told they’re in the wrong body, or that’s in the air, then they may feel that a mental illness that precedes transition can actually drive people to transition. It’s important to recognize that changing gender is often deeply associated with mental illness; it’s not the same kind of thing as changing jobs.

As one paper reports, “Data indicate that 82% of transgender individuals have considered killing themselves and 40% have attempted suicide, with suicidality highest among transgender youth.”  I am not claiming that being transgender is a form of mental illness, but that it may be a way that people resolve their mental illness. And in some cases it works: in general, transgender people report themselves happy that they transitioned. But note that in none of the cases above do they separate confounding variables of desire to transition from mental illness.

People who kill themselves after being misgendered, for example, may be those with more severe mental illness, and thus are more sensitive and more likely to take an extreme action after being misgendered.  As far as I know, the relationship between gender-affirming hormone therapy and suicide is controversial, as the most severely ill adolescents may not be given puberty blockers because they’re not deemed stable enough to medically transition yet. (Jesse Singal has bored in on the weakness of studies connecting well being and lowered suicide with “affirmative care”; you can see one of his discussions here.)

And as for the “people who live with even one accepting adult” committing suicide less often, the paper really show that the condition tested was NOT “living with one accepting adult”, but having one adult to whom you disclosed your trans status accepting it. From the cited paper:

Youth were first asked whether they had disclosed their sexual orientation to any of the following adults: parent, family member other than a parent or sibling, teacher or guidance counselor, and doctor or other healthcare provider. As a follow-up, youth were asked to what extent they were accepted by the adult(s) to whom they disclosed their sexual orientation. A variable was created that indicated whether youth felt accepted by one or more of the adults to whom they disclosed or did not feel accepted by any adult(s) to whom they disclosed. Past year suicide attempt was assessed with the question “During the past 12 months, did you actually attempt suicide?,” which was asked of youth who reported having seriously considered suicide in the past 12 months. A logistic regression model was utilized to predict past year suicide attempt based on the presence of an accepting adult while controlling for the impact of youth age, gender identity, and race/ethnicity.

Note that all of these are self-reports, so the data are based on whether the trans adolescent “felt accepted”, not “was accepted”. Nor is there anything about living with the accepting adult. The confounding variable here is the self report: even if trans youth are accepted, more severe mental illness may make them feel unaccepted and more severe mental illness may make them more suicidal. Alternatively, those youth who are stable enough to seek and get help might be less likely to attempt suicide because they have less severe mental illness.

I am not dismissing all this research out of hand, but pointing out three things. First, there are confounding variables when it comes to transgender youth that could make certain factors look like they cause suicide when they don’t (or are not as responsible for suicide as proper data would show). Second, the behaviors said to cause suicide may hide the real causes of suicide: mental illness, or may be correlated with the degree of such illness (like sensitivity to being misgendered).

Since the risk of suicidality is a big reason why gender-affirming activists urge parents and therapists to transition children as quickly as possible, it’s very important to figure out the reasons why transgender youth have such high suicide rates—especially the connection with mental illness independent of “affirming” medical care or misgendering.

Third, the rabbi ignores these confounding factors, though I’m not even sure why half of his article, which is pitched as about “six genders of Jews”, is really about suicide

On to the real topic. Did Judaism historically recognize six genders? The answer is, well, not really, for the “genders” were actually disorders of sexual development (DSDs): conditions wheb external genitalia or other secondary sex characteristic did not align with a person’s biological sex. (As always, I construe biological sex as whether someone has the equipment to produce large, immobile gametes [females] or small, mobile gametes [males)].) These ancient Jewish genders don’t at all correspond to the hundreds of genders that people use in modern society.

Rabbi Kukla tells us what those genders were:

In my own tradition, Judaism, our most sacred texts reflect a multiplicity of gender. This part of Judaism has mostly been obscured by the modern binary world until very recently.

There are four genders beyond male or female that appear in ancient Jewish holy texts hundreds of times. They are considered during discussions about childbirth, marriage, inheritance, holidays, ritual leadership and much more. We were always hiding in plain sight, but recently the research of Jewish studies scholars like Max Strassfeld has demonstrated how nonbinary gender is central to understanding Jewish law and literature as a whole.

When a child was born in the ancient Jewish world it could be designated as a boy, a girl, a “tumtum” (who is neither clearly male nor female), or an “androgynos” (who has both male and female characteristics) based on physical features. There are two more gender designations that form later in life. The “aylonit” is considered female at birth, but develops in an atypical direction. The “saris” is designated male at birth, but later becomes a eunuch.

There is not an exact equivalence between these ancient categories and modern gender identities. Some of these designations are based on biology, some on a person’s role in society. But they show us that people who are more than binary have always been recognized by my religion. We are not a fad.

When you look up these four other “genders,” you find that they’re disorders of sex development, and, contrary to the rabbis’s claim, are indeed all based on biology. You can, for example, see a list here that gives the same genders described by the rabbi:

  • “Zachar”, This term is derived from the word for memory and refers to the belief that the man carried the name and identity of the family. It is usually translated as “male” in English.
  • “Nekeivah”, This term is derived from the word for a crevice and probably refers to a vaginal opening. It is usually translated as “female” in English
  • “Ay’lonit”, is a female who does not develop at puberty and is infertile.
  • “Saris“, is a male who does not develop at puberty and/or subsequently has their sexual organs removed. A saris can be “naturally” a saris (saris hamah), or become one through human intervention (saris adam).
  • “Androgynos“, someone who has both male and female sexual characteristics. This would refer to certain intersex conditions, but in terms of gender in the modern day it is closest to androgyne or bigender.
  • “Tumtum” A person whose sexual characteristics are indeterminate or obscured.

The first two are “genders” that correspond to behaving according to your biological sex: man and woman. The other individuals, except for true hermaphrodites for gametic tissue, (perhaps “androgynos” would be one of those), are indeed male or female in the biological sense (e.g. “saris” is male, and “ay’lonit” is female). These may have been “genders” among Jews in the sense that if your sex was indeterminate, you would have to decide which, if any, sex role to play: male, female, or something else. But they are not genders in the modern sense, nor do they have anything to say about adopting sex roles when you don’t have a DSD.

But these conditions are rare: as I say in an upcoming co-authored paper:

Developmental variants are very rare, constituting only about one in 5600 people (0.018%), and also don’t represent “other sexes”. (We know of only two cases of true human hermaphrodites that were fertile, but one individual was fertile only as a male, and the other only as a female.)

There are certainly more than 1 in 5600 people today who claim they’re of a “non-male or non-female gender”: a Pew study shows that 5% of young American adults say their gender does not correspond to their biological sex. These individuals are nearly 300 times more common than the Jewish “genders” noted by Rabbi Kukla.

That’s pretty much all I have to say. These kinds of disorders would probably have been about as rare in ancient Jews as they are today, and so we can say with some confidence that the four DSD “genders” of Judaism do not at all correspond to modern genders that people assume. Even the good Rabbi himself admits that when he says:

There is not an exact equivalence between these ancient categories and modern gender identities.

And he misrepresents the genders, which are all based on biology, that is, on development going awry.

I needn’t say more except that some orthodox Jews have refuted Rabbi Kukla’s contention in a piece at the Jewish News Syndicate, but since they include Ben Shapiro, whose very name is often used to reject an argument, I’ll let you read them for yourself.

This crazy article is a prime esxample of a someone exaggerating or misrepresenting nearly all the data he adduces with the aim of showing people that the ancients accepted a diversity of genders.  He fails to show that those genders aren’t the same as modern genders, though that’s really his aim: to validate the latter by citing the former. He also fails to fairly assess the meaning of high suicidality in transgender youth.

I’ll add one more bit of confirmation bias from the rabbi:

In fact, Judaism sees us as so ancient that according to one fifth-century interpretation of the Bible, the very first human being, Adam, was actually an androgynos. This explains why Genesis says, “And God created humankind in the divine image, creating it in the image of God,” referring to Adam, the first person, with a singular pronoun. But then, the very same verse says: “creating them male and female.” (1:27). “Them,” in this ancient interpretation, also refers to Adam: a single person who is both male and female. In other words, in this reading of the creation story, the first human being is described with a singular “they” pronoun to express the multiplicity of their gender.

All I’ll say here that this is “according to one fifth-century representation of the Bible.”  Way to cherry-pick, Rabbi Kukla! What about all those other theologians who see Adam and Eve as separate people in the story: a man and a woman created by God?

h/t: Luana

 

The Jews who loved Christmas

December 22, 2022 • 11:15 am

People who wish me a “Happy Hanukkah” don’t realize that I never celebrated the Jewish holidays, the one exception being my mother lighting one candle per night on a menorah.  Otherwise, we celebrated Christmas like the goys: we had a Christmas tree, which my father called “The Hanukkah bush”, exchanged presents on Christmas morning, and had a big Christmas lunch, often featuring ham.

I don’t remember going to synagogue at all, though I did go to Hebrew school to learn the language for a bar mitzvah I never had. I flunked out of Hebrew school, and as a result was put into the all-girl class, whose instruction was less rigorous because you don’t need much Hebrew for a bat mitzvah. I was, at 12, ashamed to be in a class with all the girls, and simply left Hebrew school. That was my last connection with the faith, which I lost completely in 1967 (see here for the story, or go below the fold).

This is all a prelude to showing you two photos that my sister sent me yesterday. Apparently she and her family visited my parents’ graves (they’re in Arlington National Cemetery since my dad was a veteran), and found them decorated them for the holidays.

Her caption: “The Jews who loved Christmas!!” (She is also a heathen.):

:As they say in Yiddish
לעבעדיק ניטל

Click “read more” for my deconversion story

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