Category Archives: MUSINGS

Musing: Whistling Past the Maternity Ward

One of the many post-mortem dissections of the recently released Pew study of American Jews appeared in the Forward last week.  It contended that the Orthodox community “isn’t growing nearly as fast as some of its boosters claim.”  The 10% of the American Jewish population that identify as Orthodox Jews, the piece explains, is “up only 2% from 10 years ago.”

What’s more, the article notes, “only 48% of people who were brought up Orthodox remain Orthodox.”

As it happens, though, the Orthodox “retention rate” has risen considerably in recent decades. Whereas, indeed, only 22% of people now 65 and older raised Orthodox still call themselves that, fully 57% of people aged 30-49 raised Orthodox do.  And for those under 30, the percentage of raised-Orthodox Jews who are still Orthodox is 83%.

As to the “up only 2%” observation, it would seem that some journalists could use a math refresher.  Growth from 8% to 10% represents a rise of fully 25% – a rather impressive figure indeed.

Musing: Waters of Unlife

A lengthy piece at the online magazine Tablet describes “new Jewish rituals” that “offer comfort to women who have had abortions.”  It begins with the story of a woman who, as a young graduate student, terminated two of her pregnancies and years later came to realize that a “spiritual, ritual way” of “marking the decision” to end the lives of her unborn children “would have helped in resolving” uncomfortable feelings she had experienced.

The woman discovered a group, Mayyim Hayyim, that utilizes a mikveh for that express purpose.  A liturgical rite, written by three women – a poet, a psychologist and a rabbi – asks the Creator for help “to begin healing from this difficult decision to interrupt the promise of life.”

According to Mayyim Hayyim’s executive director, Carrie Bornstein, “Oftentimes it’s helpful for people to say, ‘I’m going to move to the next stage of my life, whatever that might bring, and I’m not going to let that experience define me or take me over.’ ”

Another “post-abortion ritual” was devised by a graduate student at the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in Cincinnati.  Yet another is in a book edited by four female Reform rabbis.

Actually, there already is a longstanding ritual for non-required abortions.  It’s called teshuva.

Musing: Two NYT Articles about Israel Say it All

Two recent articles in the New York Times conveyed as informative a picture of Palestinians and Israel as might be imagined.  One, on August 4,  profiled the “culture of conflict” nurtured by West Bank Palestinians, focusing on Arab teenagers’ delight in throwing large stones at Israel soldiers and Jewish residents of nearby communities, and younger boys’ games imitating their elders’ activities.

“Children have hobbies,” one teen, Muhammad, is quoted as explaining, “and my hobby is throwing stones.”

When a 17-year-old, arrested for his stone-throwing, was released in June after 16 months in prison, the article reports, “he was welcomed like a war hero with flags and fireworks, women in wedding finery lining the streets to cheer his motorcade.”

The second Times piece, the next day, described how, in its headline’s words, “Doctors in Israel Quietly Tend to Syria’s Wounded.”

Most Syrian patients “come here unconscious with head injuries,” said Dr. Masad Barhoum, the director general of one of the hospitals, the Western Galilee Hospital in Nahariya. “They wake up after a few days or whenever and hear a strange language and see strange people,” he continued. “If they can talk, the first question is, ‘Where am I?’ ”

“I am sure,” he added “there is an initial shock when they hear they are in Israel.”

A 13-year-old girl, who had required complex surgery, was interviewed “sitting up in bed in a pink Pooh Bear T-shirt.”  Her aunt, who had managed to locate her and was happy with the treatment her niece had received, told the reporter that they hoped to return to Syria later this week.

“Asked what she will say when she goes back home, the aunt replied: ‘I won’t say that I was in Israel. It is forbidden to be here, and I am afraid of the reactions’.”

The two pieces, taken together, really say it all.

Musing: Message for a Maniac

New York’s tabloids and international news services alike took note of a New Jersey court appearance by Nazi admirer Heath Campbell, who named his first-born ‘Adolf Hitler’ (yemach shemo – although Mr. Campbell neglected to add that phrase to the name) and has had all four of his children removed from his home in the wake of violent incidents there.

The proudly fascist dad, who is seeking to have his children returned to him, appeared in court in an authentic World War II Nazi uniform, complete with medals, knee-high boots and an armband sporting a swastika.

“I want my children back,” Campbell told the Daily News.

And I want my grandparents back.  My uncles, aunts and cousins too.

Musing: The Spelling Champ Who Wasn’t

As most everyone knows by now, the ethnic Indian 2013 Scripps National Spelling Bee champion, 13-year-old Arvind Mahankali, won the final bee by correctly spelling the word knaidel, the Yiddish word for a dumpling.

What only a privileged few – now including you – know is that, back in 1989, a 10-year-old Jewish girl, whose last name at the time was Shafran (she has moved on in both locale and life, and is today a mother several times over and a beloved teacher in Milwaukee), came close to winning the spelling championship of Rhode Island and moving on to the national contest. But she erred.

The word she misspelled was “mistletoe.”

Musing: They’ve Uncovered Our Secret Weapon

Mehdi Taeb, who is close to Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, recently revealed that the Jews are the most powerful sorcerers in the world today, and that they have used their powers to attack Iran.  While Iran has so far prevailed, he explained, the full force of Jewish sorcery has not yet been brought to bear.

“The [Jewish] people,” he confided, “believe that it is possible to…  even…  control G-d’s decisions, by using sorcery methods… ”

Don’t know about sorcery, but prayer and repentance have indeed long demonstrated the potential to merit Divine assistance.

Musing: Different Paths, Equally Righteous

The verse that opens the haftarah-reading this Shabbos, from the prophet Amos, refers to the Jewish people as being as dear to G-d as “the children of Kush” – a kingdom of black people.

“Just as a Kushite differs [from others] in [the color of] his skin,” comments the Talmud (Moed Katan, 16b), “so are the Jewish people different in their actions.”

The Chasam Sofer’s interpretation of that comment (he apparently had “the righteous” in place of “the Jewish people”) is well worth pondering.

His words:

“It is well known that every Jew is required to observe all the mitzvos.  But there is no single path for them all.  One Jew may excel in Torah-study, another in avodah (service, or prayer), another in kindnesses to others; this one in one particular mitzvah, that one in another.  Nevertheless, while they all differ from each other in their actions, they all have the same intention, to serve Hashem with their entire hearts.

“Behold the Kushite.  Inside, his organs, his blood and his appearance are all the same as other people’s.  Only in the superficiality of his skin is he different from others.  This is the meaning of ‘[different] in his skin,’ [meaning] only in his skin.  Likewise, the righteous are different [from one another] only ‘in their actions’; their inner conviction and intention, though, are [the same,] aimed at serving Hashem in a good way.”

Musing: Full Circle for a Firebrand Feminist

A long article in The New Yorker chronicles the life and death of radical feminist  Shulamith Firestone, who angrily rejected her Jewish heritage and whose name in the 1960s became synonymous with the jettisoning of traditional mores.

Ms. Firestone died last August at 67, after increasingly exhibiting signs of schizophrenia over the final decades of her life, during which she survived on public assistance and the kindness of others.  She eventually became a recluse, living in a East Village tenement and refusing visitors.

The article, by the Jewish feminist journalist and author Susan Faludi, includes a deeply moving image, recounting how a spurned visitor to the shut-in recalled hearing “a torrent of Hebrew coming from inside” the tenement.  “Firestone,” the article explains, “was reciting Jewish prayers.”