Frustrated Jewish feminist resents that students want normal Judaism
Girls Just Wanna Be ‘Frum’

JOFA conference speaker says feminism lags at Talmud study programs in Israel.

Gary Rosenblatt - Editor And Publisher
http://www.thejewishweek.com/news/newscontent.php3?artid=13679
Friday, February 23, 2007 / 5 AdarI 5767

Emily Shapiro Katz says that for young American women studying in Modern Orthodox yeshivot in Israel post-high school, unlike for their male counterparts, “intellectual rigor and religious fervor” don’t really mix.

While many of the young men aspire to become proficient in Talmud studies, “many of the girls come to Israel with their ultimate goal to stop wearing pants” and only wear long skirts, observed Shapiro Katz, 31, who was both a student and teacher in several Modern Orthodox yeshivot for American women in Jerusalem.

The primary goal of the Judaic studies teachers was to make the young women more observant, Shapiro Katz told a workshop on “The Year In Israel: Expanding Horizons or Narrowing Scope?” at the JOFA (Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance) conference here Feb. 11. And the students themselves were far more interested in laws pertaining to the trappings of modesty — covering one’s hair when married, skirt lengths, wearing pants, etc. — than in the academic pursuit of Talmud study.

More than 40 people attended the session, almost all female and about half high school students, no doubt eager to hear more about a rite of passage that has become increasingly common in Modern Orthodox circles: attending a yeshiva in Israel full-time for a year, and sometimes two, before starting college in the U.S.

The phenomenon of young men arriving in Israel and becoming rapidly and intensely observant, known as “flipping out,” has been much discussed in the Orthodox community in recent years, with some students giving up planned spaces in Ivy League colleges for yeshiva life on return to the U.S. But what of the girls?

Shapiro Katz offered a cautionary tale for a Modern Orthodox community that may believe that it has made more progress in terms of gender equality than it actually has.

A graduate of Stern College, Shapiro Katz studied at Midreshet Lindenbaum’s Talmud program and later taught at Midreshet Moriah, Machon Gold and several other learning programs for visiting American young women. The teaching experience she described was of young women wanting to be told how to act, particularly from the young rabbis who taught them rather than from the women instructors.

The female students “preferred Mussar to Gemara, shmooze to chavruta and psak to debate,” she said, using “yeshiva” terms to describe how students sought the less thorough forms of academic inquiry and were more interested in answers than questions.

As for showing more respect for the male teachers who were rabbis, rather than the female instructors of the same age who were addressed by their first names, Shapiro Katz spoke of a “religious/erotic fusion” — with the girls often having innocent “crushes” on the rabbis, who were only a few years older than them, a situation heightened by the fact that the students were separated from boys their own age.

The female students said they wanted more men as teachers, prompting one woman teacher to despair that “these girls only trust male knowledge,” Shapiro Katz recalled.

An engaging speaker and careful listener whose presentation conveyed a clear gift for teaching as well as a frustration with the way things are, Shapiro Katz described her six years of personal experience in Israel as a student and later an instructor, and the research she conducted at Hebrew University’s senior educators program on the tensions female faculty members felt between their personal beliefs and what they taught. All of which led her to conclude that “any practices construed as feminist are considered dangerous” in even the most enlightened of Israeli yeshivot for American young women.

These schools are considered examples of “women’s progress” in that they are devoted to rigorous Talmud study, as well as other Judaic subjects. But Shapiro Katz asserted that the atmosphere and administrative aspirations of these schools “raise questions” about the compatibility of feminism and Orthodoxy.

Shapiro Katz cited, and had the conference workshop participants discuss, a number of direct quotes culled from interviews she conducted with seven female instructors between the ages of 25 and 33 at several women’s yeshivot. All of them expressed the sense that they had no one with whom to discuss issues of inner conflict between teaching both tzniyut, or modesty, and independent thinking, and between religious practice and personal empowerment.

“I never imagined how afraid these girls have been of feminism,” one of the women instructors told Shapiro Katz, adding: “I know beyond any shadow of a doubt that if the girls were to perceive me as a feminist or if I would ever introduce myself as a feminist … many of them would not take my class. I would immediately become pasul (disallowed). I would immediately become disqualified in their eyes as somebody who could possibly take halacha (Jewish law) seriously.”

While some of the women teachers may have worn pants in their private lives or participated in women’s Megillah reading, they said they never discussed such things with their students.

Shapiro Katz also noted that being single was a distinct disadvantage for a woman teacher, becoming the object of pity of many of the students who are at an age when they worry about whether they themselves will marry.

“At some level they’re thinking,‘I don’t want to be like her,’ even if she is my total role model,” one teacher told Shapiro Katz for her study.

Several young women who attended Modern Orthodox study programs in Jerusalem in the last several years took issue with Shapiro Katz’s views, saying perhaps the best known institution in Israel for women’s Talmud study, Midreshet Lindenbaum, was a clear exception, and that several new schools founded recently are catering to more intellectually curious and open-minded students.

Emily Steinberger, a student at Columbia University who last year attended Midreshet Lindenbaum, said the students she knew were very serious about their learning and about growing spiritually and that is why they chose the program. She also said the women faculty members were treated with great respect.

“I was in awe of these women who were so learned and so qualified,” she said, adding: “We had as much respect for them” as for their rabbinic counterparts.

After four years of teaching in several Israeli programs for American young women, Shapiro Katz, who has since married, returned to the U.S. and is now on the faculty of an adult education program of a large Reform temple in San Francisco.

“I’m a pluralist educator now and I feel liberated, but I no longer have influence over the Orthodox world,” she said, which saddens her. “I wear pants so I’m pasul.”

What the Orthodox community needs, said Shapiro Katz, is to create new yeshivot in Israel that are “proudly feminist” so that girls will no longer point out that they attend one of the existing yeshivot and then qualify the remark with “but I’m not a feminist,” as she says is common now.

“We need places where the teachers can be themselves” and where the students can be themselves. Until parents speak up, primarily through their checkbooks — as in not sending their children to programs that do not espouse their values — the situation will remain as it is, she said.

Labels: Feminism, Jewish women, Modern Orthodox Judaism

- posted by Izak @ 2:54 AM (2) comments

 
Lubavitch's ghosts - past and present
Messiah Flesh and Blood

By Avirama Golan
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=824394
Tue., February 13, 2007 Shvat 25, 5767

I. Piecing Together the Rebbe's Secret Years

Professor Menachem Friedman was certain that he was only taking a short detour from the study of the Chabad movement and its rabbinical dynasty which has occupied his time for the past few years. "Must check out some of the more obscure biographical data," he jotted in his notes, in reference to the years shrouded in mystery which the late Lubavitcher rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson, spent in Berlin and Paris. In our day and age, reasoned Friedman, a careful scholar for whom details are practically an obsession, there are no black holes: everything can be tracked down and investigated. Friedman decided that he must go to Berlin and Paris to find out what the rebbe did there. How and why did he leave Russia, Friedman wondered, rather than .devoting himself to his studies at the Tomekhei Temimim yeshiva in Otwock, a small town near Warsaw, or joining his father-in-law's court in Riga?

Friedman's inquiry commenced in the summer of 1991, but his fascination with the Lubavitcher rebbe actually began many years earlier, when he was a yeshiva student at the Yishuv Hehadash yeshiva in Tel-Aviv. The stories about the charismatic rabbi with a handful of scientific doctorates from important universities in the West fired his imagination and inspired him to pursue his own desire for secular knowledge. "There was something in it that gave a young religious person like myself the confidence to venture into the academic world," Friedman says.

Later, when Friedman was already immersed in his studies, the astonishing growth of the Chabad movement aroused his curiosity. Owing to me unique power of the rebbe, Chabad went from being a relatively marginal group, carrying little influence with ultra-Orthodox Jewry and the Israeli government, to a major phenomenon. Friedman was especially fascinated by Schneerson's ability to rally Israeli politicians to his cause.

Beginning in the 1980s, Friedman began to collect every snippet of information he could find about the rebbe's personality. He listened intently to the moving accounts of those who had met with the rebbe in private. Everyone spoke about his eyes: so blue, so piercing. About his attentiveness and impressive erudition. About his winning personality. In 1991, Mordechai Menashe Laufer began to put together a collection of oral and written testimony about Schneerson called "The Days of the King: Excerpts from the Life and Work of the Renowned Leader of our Generation: Rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneerson of Lubavitch." Laufer never claimed to have written an official biography; his introduction makes it quite clear that he has merely compiled data from many different sources. In the first volume, he calls the rebbe a "hidden tzaddik [righteous man]" who appears in changing disguises, a modest, unassuming man in the full sense of the phrase, which is why many people who have met him have trouble remembering details.

This typical Hasidic approach may explain some of the mystery surrounding the figure of the rebbe. Anything is possible. Those who met the rebbe may not remember exactly what occurred; those who remember may not understand; those who saw one thing may have understood it to mean something else; those who did not see may have been unable to comprehend what they were seeing.

Friedman's quest began in 1991, as he peered intently into one of the pictures from Schneerson's Berlin days which appears in "The Days of the King." Schneerson had gone to study in Berlin before his marriage to Hayah Mushka, the daughter of his predecessor, Rabbi Yosef Yitzhak Schneerson, and he returned there immediately after the wedding. As a Jew who left Soviet Russia in 1927, headed for Riga, and then ended up in Berlin several months later, one would have expected every police force in the world, not to mention the German police, to sit up and take notice.

When Friedman reached Berlin, he found that some of the archives had been destroyed when the Allies bombed the city during World War II. "From my perspective, the research is incomplete," he says, "although there is always the possibility that documents showing when exactly he arrived and where he was coming from will still materialize." Under the circumstances, Friedman started off his search at the university. According to Laufer, Rabbi Joseph'Dov Halevi Soloveichik of Boston was also studying at the university in Berlin at the time, and he lived nearby. Whenever he had a question about an academic or religious text, he would stop over at Schneerson's house and consult with him. Laufer (citing one of the rabbis who heard it from Soloveichik himself and a Kfar Chabad rabbi who heard it from associates of Soloveichik) says that even though Schneerson did not spend much time at his studies, his marks were always higher than Soloveichik's. Moreover, "the rebbe was known to have received several advanced degrees in Berlin, and then later in Paris." Another witness, a resident of Tel Aviv, claimed that everyone knew the rebbe was attending university, and that despite his low-key presence, "everyone knew that a unique personality was in town."

Friedman walked into the archives of the von Humbolt University in Berlin, formerly known as the Frederick Wilhelm University, and asked to see the student registration lists for all faculties from 1926. Although he knew that Schneerson had left for Paris in 1932, he checked the lists up to 1935 just to be sure. The archive director, Dr. Winifred Schultze, placed several fat volumes on a table, and Friedman began to leaf through them. There were thousands of names on the lists, complete with addresses, changes of address, countries of origin, birth dates and passport numbers. He found Rabbi Joseph Dov Halevi Soloveichik of Boston, who was studying theosophy. His eyes lit up once more to find Rabbi Professor Alexander Altaian. "This was a very important academic institution," Friedman says. "People came here from all over the world. There were Jews from Palestine, too. I have their names. From Hadera, Tel Aviv. It is not possible that [Schneerson] was omitted inadvertently."

Hour after hour, day after day, Friedman pored over the lists and discovered nothing. He was frustrated and tired. Sometimes he would try other sources: lists of tenants living in rented .apartments; water, electricity and telephone bills at the municipality. How could it be that Chabad literature claimed the rebbe had lived there for six years and everyone knew about it, whereas Friedman could find no trace of him? Friedman called Professor Menachern Ben Sasson of the Hebrew University. Had Dr. Yosef Burg, his father-in-law, who had studied at the Hildesheimer rabbinical seminary and visited all the shteibels and rabbinical courts to satisfy his insatiable cultural curiosity, ever spotted the rebbe in Berlin? Burg, known for his razor-sharp memory, had neither seen nor heard. Soloveichik' s son, Professor Haim Soloveichik, also denied that his father had met Schneerson in Berlin. Friedman became anxious. "Where could this man have been?" he asked himself in despair one night. "It seems that he was never here, and if he was, no one saw him."

A small, thin man with a pointy beard and a knitted black yarmulke sat in his hotel room in Berlin, gazing out the window at the crowd below. He felt like he was being buffeted by the wind. Suddenly his wife blurted out: "You're telling me that Schneerson's wife, Hayah Mushka, was with him in Berlin . They had no children. So what did she do all day? Maybe you should try looking for her?" Friedman rushed to the archives. Were women permitted to study in those days? he asked. "If not at the university, then perhaps at the school for overseas students," the archivist replied. "You know, they studied German there. A little history. Geography. They even put out a student newspaper." "Do you have any records?" asked Friedman. The archivist replied, "Here we have records for everything." He pulled out a small book and opened it to 1927. Friedman turned the pages. Nothing. 1928 - still nothing, although he did find some familiar-sounding names: Zohara Wilbush of Haifa, Hayah Berski of Tel Aviv, Alexander Barash of Tel Aviv. Yehudit Margolin, Menachem Zulai, even Yemima Cernowitz. But then he saw it. He could barely believe his eyes: Schneerson, Hayah Mushka. Citizenship: Soviet Union . Address: Oranienburgstr 33, at Braun. Registration date: January 23,1929. Course no. 57 and 45. Hayah Mushka had also completed two other courses. Friedman was walking on air. "They were here!" he cried. "The rebbe was here, and I've got to find him!" "Well," said the archivist, "I've just thought of one last way to do it.", Tomorrow: The Missing Brother-in-Law, Where is Rose Street and Who Was the Rebbe's Talmud Partner?

Missing Brother-in-Law Found in Paris

Prof. Menachem Friedman looked wearily at the chief archivist. "Here," said Dr. Winifred Schultze. "This is a record of the students who audited courses at the university without receiving academic credit." Friedman flipped through the pages and there it was at long last: Menachem Mendel Schneerson, a.k.a the Lubavitcher rebbe, had attended philosophy and mathematics courses at a Berlin university for one and a half semesters. Two addresses were given: the Hildesheimer rabbinical seminary, and then a working-class neighborhood not far from Berlin's old Jewish quarter.

Little by little, the pieces began to fall into place. The rebbe's wife, Hayah Mushka, had attended the Deutsche Institute, and the rebbe had audited university courses for at least a year. The rebbe's name appeared in the auditing records on April 27,1928, and then again on November 21, 1929. But where had he been before that? Schneerson was known to have spent time in Germany prior to his marriage. And what about afterwards? The couple had resided in Berlin for six years, from 1927-1933. What could Schneerson have been doing all that time? Friedman has no doubt that the rebbe, self-taught, intellectually curious, and capable of absorbing vast amounts of material, spent his days reading. "He was a loner," says Friedman. "Books were always his closest friends. I am sure that he sat in the library reading everything in sight."

Why the rebbe chose such a "goyish" center of Western culture is a question for which the people at Chabad have no definite answer. Some speculate that it has to do with the mystical theory of "klippot" (husks) and "nitzotzot" (sparks). Throughout their lives, Hasidim are commanded to seek out sparks of faith an extremely difficult mission requiring one to aspire to the highest dimensions of spirituality. Tzaddikim, or righteous men, are capable of finding sparks even where crudity prevails. The true tzaddik can extract the purest of sparks from what appears to be the thickest husk. When asked about his secular studies, the rebbe advised young people not to follow in his footsteps. It was true that he had studied in Russia, Berlin and Paris, he said on one occasion, but he had come to realize that 95 percent of the students were not genuinely interested in the material and ended up learning nothing. Attending university was something that he, the rebbe, could do, but everyone else was best off at yeshiva.

According to Chabad lore, the young Menachem Mendel Schneerson, son of the Kabbalist rabbi Levi Yitzhak (and great-grandson of Zemach Zedek, the third Admor of Chabad), left Soviet Russia together with his future father-in-law, Rabbi Yosef Yitzhak Schneerson. They spent a short time in Riga, where Rabbi Yosef Yitzhak tried to set up court, before moving to Otwock in 1935 (after the outbreak of World War II, he fled to the United States). All this time, Menachem Mendel was engaged to marry the rabbi's daughter, Hayah Mushka. A booklet published after Hayah Mushka's death explains that "owing to the hardship in those days, it was not possible to hold the wedding soon after the engagement," and even after their departure from Russia, "there were delays."

Friedman would rather not advance any theories in this regard, lest he end up distorting the facts. Nevertheless, there is evidence that Rabbi Yosef Yitzhak's two young daughters, Hayah Mushka and Shayne, were not in a hurry to marry. Hayah Mushka was 27, and her sister, 26, when they stood under the wedding canopy. A family relative claims that when the young Schneerson first came to the rebbe's court in 1925, he was interested not in Hayah Mushka but in her younger sister. However, this is difficult to prove and remains mere speculation. One way or another, Schneerson arrived in Berlin alone, apparently in 1926, and his betrothed, Hayah Mushka, stayed home with her father. The wedding took place only two years later, in November 1928 not in Riga, where the family lived, but in Warsaw where Rabbi Yosef Yitzhak headed a yeshiva. On December 2, 1928, the local Jewish paper reported that the groom wore European clothing (which was not the custom among Polish Hasidim), that he held several academic degrees, and that the bride was educated, too. In the Chabad community, weddings are important events, generally celebrated in grand style. In this case, the guests left with a bad taste in their mouths: Thieves and pickpockets took advantage of the festivities to work the crowd, and even the rebbe admitted, years later, that his wedding had been a "very disorganized affair." For this reason, he said, Shayne and her husband were married in a modest ceremony, in an out-of-the-way town near Vilna.

Who was Shayne's husband? Where did this couple disappear to after their marriage in 1932, which is barely mentioned in Chabad literature? Chabad sources claim that the two perished in the Holocaust, and that the rebbe recited the mourner's kaddish for them every year. These sources also state that the rebbe studied nautical engineering at the Paris Sorbonne. If this is so, where did he live? In the Jewish Quarter? Photographs and other evidence point to Rue de Rosier, near the central synagogue.

Friedman called his, friend, Jules Cappell, a comparative religions scholar with connections in the intelligence community. Perhaps he went to a private university, said Cappell. They checked, but came up empty-handed. An old Jew spoke to them over the phone. He said he knew where the rebbe had studied. Then he got scared and claimed to have forgotten. He was just a feeble old man, he declared. Friedman begged him to reconsider. "All right," he said. "It's called ESTP, a technological college for construction and industrial engineering on Boulevard St. Germain in Montparnasse."

"A lot of baloney," thought Friedman. "I'm sure Jules will tell me there is no such place." He took his wife and went to sit in a local cafe. At three o'clock, he returned to the hotel. An urgent message was waiting for him. "Yes!" shouted Cappell. "He did study there! Tomorrow at nine we'll go down and check the records."

Friedman could not sleep all night. At eight thirty in the morning, he was at the school office. A file lay on the table. "Finally I met the rebbe," he said. "I saw his picture attached to the top of the file. I was so excited I nearly lost my mind." He begged the secretary for permission to take a photograph. She said no, but eventually gave in. He pulled out his pocket camera and snapped page after page. Then he dragged the whole file over to the photocopy machine. Here he is! The rebbe himself! In flesh and blood! Mendel Schneerson. Soviet citizen. Grades: Not outstanding, but not bad. Diploma: Licensed to practice electrical engineering. Address: Aha! 9 Rue de Boulard, 14th arr. No wonder he was nowhere to be found in the Jewish Quarter. Friedman raced from the school to Rue de Boulard. Quite a way, he thought to himself. I wonder how the rebbe walked all this way every Shabbat. In the wintertime, he asked to leave early on Friday afternoon. A note was appended: permission granted, on condition that all tests are passed.

In February 1996, Friedman returned to Paris to check out the building on Rue de Boulard. At the Paris archives, he obtained a full list of tenants from the 1930s: Tchi Que, Chinese. Bruno Rani, Italian. Alexander Muzamin, Russian artist. Another russian. A journalist. A French waiter. And Menachem Mendel, Russian student. Immediately following, Hayah Schneerson. Friedman put the list down. These are the neighbors the rebbe studied Talmud with? Never mind, he consoled himself. At least I've found him. Then, towards the bottom of the list, he made out two familiar names: Mendel Hornstein and Shayne Hornstein. The missing brother- and sister-in-law! Friedman went back over the documents. How could he have missed it, he wondered. There in the engineering school file, below the note granting the rebbe permission to leave early on Friday, was another note: "Permission also granted to Mendel Hornstein."

Friedman raced back to the school office. Yes. Mendel Hornstein studied here. This is his student card. You want to photograph it? No, really. This is going too far. You can look at it and that's all. Friedman copied down all the data: Mendel Hornstein. Polish citizen. Previous studies: Faculty of Philosophy in Warsaw. Born: 1905. Years of study: 1933-1937. Examined on July 24, 1937. Failed. The two couples apparently lived together in Paris, in a neighborhood far from the Jewish community. Right after their marriage in 1932, Shayne and Mendel joined the rebbe and his wife, and the move was clearly planned in advance.

Friedman displays a photograph of the young Mendel Hornstein. No beard or sidelocks. Not even a hat. A fascinating character, says Friedman. His mother was the aunt of Rabbi Yosef Yitzhak Schneerson and the daughter of Rabbi Shalom Dober, the-fifth Admor of Chabad. He is almost never mentioned in Chabad sources, apart from his having joined the rebbe's "shlihot" prayers in Paris. His picture is never shown. Why has Mendel Hornstein, such a close and intimate member of Rabbi Yosef Yitzhak Schneerson's family, been erased from the collective memory of the Chabad movement? In 1997, Friedman set off to Warsaw to find out.

Warsaw and Tales of Chabad

One of the publications put out by Chabad contains a rare photograph of Shayne, the youngest daughter of Rabbi Yosef Yitzhak Schneerson. Shayne, dressed in a wedding gown, sits stiffly on a table or a high stool, her face toward the camera and her body turned dramatically to one side a pose common at the time. With a determined look on her face, and only the barest hint of a smile, Shayne makes for a very attractive portrait indeed. It is a photograph that makes us curious to know more about these sisters, who postponed marriage and spent years living in one of the more colorful, "goyish" neighborhoods of Paris, far from the crowded warmth of the Hasidic court and their father's home. What made their husbands choose a technical career like electrical engineering? One theory, now corroborated by Chabad, is that Rabbi Yosef Yitzhak put his sons-in-law through school to ensure that they had a source of livelihood. According to Chabad, Menachem Mendel even found a job upon arrival in the United States. This week, Chabad denied having written about Mendel Hornstein's death in the Holocaust and the fact that he never became a rabbi. "Actually," they said, "he is not that interesting." For Professor Menachem Friedman, Hornstein is not just interesting,,' he is fascinating. When Friedman arrived in Poland, he asked a Polish journalist to assist him in his research at Warsaw University.

To his surprise, things proceeded smoothly this time. He found the file, opened it and gasped in amazement. There was the young Mendel Hornstein, gazing back at him with beautiful, soulful eyes and a clean-shaven face. Now he understood why Rabbi Yosef Yitzhak had preferred to hold his daughter's wedding in some outlying town and not in Warsaw, where hordes of Hasidim from different courts would be looking and watching. Friedman easily found records for the whole family - Moshe and Mussia Hornstein and their children. Mendel Hornstein's name also appeared on a long list of Jewish and Polish youngsters who had received a discount on their tuition. Poring over Hornstein's photograph, Friedman addressed him as if he were alive: You are the Mendel who lived alongside the rebbe in Paris for nine years, who married the beautiful Shayne, who failed your engineering exams and went back to Poland. For some reason, Friedman felt a special need to document the life of this young man.

Mendel Hornstein was born in Annopol, Volhynia on April 23, 1905. He went to school there for four years. In 1922, he moved to Warsaw with his parents and attended high school in Otwock. In 1926, he applied to Warsaw University. After being turned down by the mechanical engineering department, he studied philosophy and mathematics, but never received his degree. In 1932, he married Shayne Schneerson, born in the town of Lubavitch in 1904. The wedding took place on June 14, as soon as the academic year was over, and in January 1933, the couple joined Menachem Mendel and his wife Hayah Muskha in Paris. Both couples were childless. In 1942, on the second day of Rosh Hashanah, Shayne died in Treblinka. Her husband was murdered soon afterward, on November 5, 1942. Hornstein arrived in Paris with his Warsaw University records, but he had trouble gaining admission to the technical college in Montparnasse. "The Days of the King," a collection of stories about the Lubavitcher rebbe, goes into great length about these difficulties, but in reference to his brother-in-law, Menachem Mendel. The sentimental tale is told by Dr. Meir Shochetman, "who had the privilege of studying with the rebbe at university in Paris [the Sorbonne] and helping the rebbe and his wife in their early days in the French capital."

Shochetman goes into a long, winding story about the anti-Semitism of the admissions committee and an "unexpected" problem which came up: It was the custom to sit in the lecture halls bare-headed. Shochetman solved the problem by wearing a beret. He says the rebbe studied nautical engineering and mathematics, and possibly psychology. Friedman claims to have proof that the bulk of Shochetman's testimony is fabricated and that he has embellished the facts in true Chabad style. This week, Shochetman's son, Professor Eliav Shochetman of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, doubted that fact could be effectively separated from fiction when there ere no living witnesses to ask.

One can be fairly certain that the elder Shochetman's testimony has undergone cosmetic changes at a minimum. "The Days of the King" is considered rather archaic today among the younger adherents of Chabad, but even the most educated and modern Chabadniks live comfortably with the Hasidic narrative. After all, such stories are like a tribal campfire which burns bright, supplying fuel for the sociological, cultural and ideological foundations of Hasidism as a whole, and the Chabad movement, in particular. A quick glance at any Hasidic work, from the popular Baal Shem Tov tales to the rarest anthologies of forgotten tzaddikim, reveals an almost uniform tendency to glorify reality using the same literary tools we are familiar with from the world of ancient folk tales. When a tzaddik is born, a great light fills the room. When he is four years old, he makes a wise comment that excites the rabbis, who predict a great future for him.

He is so engrossed in his books that his mother may call him to dinner six times before he hears her. And then there are other wonders and miracles which are not even worth trying to interpret logically. Professor Israel Bartal, a historian at the Hebrew University, has coined the phrase "Orthodox historiography." Chabad, he says, is particularly interesting because it specializes hi writing history that may have a certain scientific value, and has actually been writing its own chronicles since the 19th century. One of the earliest collections of Hasidic stories, "Shivhei ha-Besht" ("Praises of the Baal Shem Tov"), was compiled by Chabad and brought to press by the same printer who produced the Chabad classic, the "Tanya."

Traditional Jewish society was not of a historical mindset. Historical awareness really began to evolve in the wake of early 19th-century Romantics. Chabad, however, was a forerunner in this sphere. Bartal is also fascinated by how each generation produces a Chabad of its own while preserving a heterogeneous character within that generation. An appreciation of history, Bartal says, is part of the process of modernization, and Chabad has been particularly adept at exploiting modern tools for traditional purposes. Contemporary examples are their mitzvah tanks and the Chabad Internet site. "The writings of Rabbi Yosef Yitzhak are a wonderful blend of irrational legend and 19th-century archival references," he says. "The Chabad story is so much easier to absorb than a serious academic study."

Chabad historiography is designed, of course, to transmit a clear message and address man's inner world. But if the inner world of the traditional religious community is in such good shape, why do Chabad historiographers need the justification of history? Bartal sees this as a desperate battle against modernity. Secular historians are perceived as liars who use scientific tools to disparage Judaism. If that is the case, the Chabadniks say, then we are against enlightenment, but if there is anyone who is enlightened, it is us.

Rabbi Yosef Yitzhak Schneerson left Europe for the United States feeling that the natural world of Europe had been destroyed as the result of demonic trends directly connected to enlightenment. In his eyes, enlightenment became the direct opposite of Hasidism. Borrowing metaphors from the Russian Revolution, he was convinced that the Haskala movement was an international organization with a network of mysterious spies. In his own essays on Hasidism, he used images derived from the historical writings of Dubnow. But he went further than that. He began to build up a cadre of history writers to provide an alternative to Dubnow.

The result, Bartal says, is a "fascinating dialogue of mirror images." Yet it is an anachronistic view of history which views the 18th century through 20th-century lenses. Since World War II, one of the most significant tools in Orthodox historiography in general, and of Chabad in particular, is nostalgia: the image of a completely religious world in which theology occupies center stage. Or, in short, the return to an earthly Garden of Eden, the very opposite of the miserable, gloom-filled Jewish world which the Zionists invented for their own purposes.

When Friedman's book comes out, curious Chabadniks will stampede the bookstores. They will look for errors and argue with a passion they rarely display to the outside world. This week, members of Kfar Chabad were saying that the time had come for "one of our own" to take the plunge and write a real biography of the rebbe. Chabad spokesman Menachem Brod denied feeling threatened by Friedman's study. On the contrary, he said, any document or factual discovery about the life of the rebbe is welcome. "We ourselves are collecting material and intend to publish it on an official basis," Brod noted. "But I cannot say that personal speculations by Friedman or any other researcher are appreciated."

And yesterday, as if to prove Bartal right, a Chabadnik expressed himself this way: "The moment the facts are in our hands, they become our history. What other people write doesn't matter."

----

The Lubavitcher Rebbe as a god

By Saul Sadka
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=824393
Tue., February 13, 2007 Shvat 25, 5767

"Joy to the world the Lord has come."

This misquote from Isaac Watts, along with a link to a Chabad Web site, appears on a billboard. Not a real billboard, but a Photoshopped one that appears on the Web site of a Chabad activist in the U.S.

Rabbi Ariel Sokolovsky is a Moldova-born Chabad rabbi in Portland, Oregon, and a more amiable soul would be hard to find.

Yet Sokolovsky maintains a blog he entitled "Rebbegod" and refers to Schneerson as "Rebbe-Almighty" among other adulatory sobriquets.

Drawing on rabbinical sources, he attempts to show that this is not as revolutionary as it sounds. He concedes that there are few people like him who will openly call the Rebbe God. He claims, however, that many people believe it, but do not say so openly for fear of scaring people away from Chabad altogether.

While he argues that the Rebbe and God are not the same thing exactly, he says that he does not object to people thinking that they are the same thing.

He recounts an incident in which he confronted his teacher - a senior Chabad rabbi from the former USSR - as to why he would not openly declare the Rebbe to be God. According to Sokolowsky, the senior rabbi jokingly warned him: "there can be many gods but only one Moshiach."

Menachem Mendel Schneerson has by most accounts been dead for 12 years. Yet the details of Schneerson's life and death are mired in controversy, with wide discrepancies between the hagiographic account perpetuated by his followers and the scholarly research.

Chabad accounts of his early life tell of a brilliant student who excelled at the great universities of Berlin and the Sorbonne. After gaining degrees in subjects including nautical engineering, he subsequently fled to New York during World War II, where he worked on top secret military work.

But according to research by Professor Menachem Friedman, after he married a distant cousin, the daughter of his predecessor as "Rebbe," they lived far from any Jewish life during much of the 1930s - residing along with her sister and brother-in-law in a non-Jewish suburb of Paris. Eyewitnesses who knew them reported that she was often seen in modern dress and he bareheaded.

While in Paris he acquired his only formal education: he took a two year vocational course in electrical engineering at a Montparnase Vocational College where he achieved mediocre grades. He left for New York, where he spent the war as a worker at the Brooklyn Naval Yard.

Following the death of his father-in-law, Schneerson took up the reins as the grand rabbi or "Rebbe" of Lubavitch. Lubavitch was founded by Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi, a venerated figure who founded his sect on the principles of "Wisdom, Understanding and Knowledge" (the Hebrew acronym of which is "Chabad"), as a response to criticism of the new Hasidic movement for its obscurantism and superstition. The modern movement that is Chabad-Lubavitch is a far cry from that noble dream.

The Chabad headquarters in the Crown Heights district of New York has become a battleground of different factions within the movement.

The voice of moderates who believe the Rebbe is in fact dead (though most of this group still adhere to his belief of his ultimate resurrection and coronation as messiah) is increasingly cowed, with violent brawls breaking out and spilling on the streets on a regular basis leading to scores of hospitalizations and arrests.

Even the installment of a memorial plaque can cause a riot; as one rioter told the press: "He's alive - they are writing that the Rebbe is dead!"

At the front of the main room at Chabad headquarters in Crown Heights sits the Rebbe's empty chair - its cushions unruffled for more than 12 years. The chair is kept as it was during his lifetime.

Before the daily afternoon prayers, a number of the men perform the ritual of unfurling a Persian rug, moving the Rebbe's chair out from under a desk, fiddling with his prayer shawls and books as if he were about to walk in and take his seat.

The prayers conclude as normal, but the service is followed by singing and chanting with Hora dancing around the central podium. "Long live our Master, our Rebbe, King Messiah," sing the dancing men and boys as they form conga lines - a routine part of this thrice-daily ritual.

The dancing suddenly stops and a sudden hush silences the room. Four young boys each brandishing a large yellow flag bearing the Rebbe's crest part the dancers and move alongside the platform that supports the Rebbe's chair and desk.

Raising the flags high they chant in unison: "We want Moshiach now! We want Moshiach now! WE WANT MOSHIACH NOW!"

A man of about 40 years of age carefully reverses the rituals that had prepared the Rebbe's chair for prayers as the rapt crowd watches. The service terminated, the men stand at ease. Many are wearing yellow lapel-pins, signifying commitment to extremist messianism.

Members of the congregation were happy to explain:

What do the pins signify?"It symbolizes our dedication to the Rebbe above all else."

Above all else? Above God? "As far as we are concerned, we can pray to the Rebbe and he can deal with God for us."

Is that not turning the Rebbe into a god himself, an idol of your own creation? "The Rebbe was not created; the Rebbe has always been around and always will be."

If one believes in God but leaves the Rebbe aside, is one still Jewish? "When the messiah reveals himself, those who didn't see him won't be saved, so you should work on..." He is interrupted. "Look, what you need to do is start with God and work your way up to the Rebbe."

While it may seem bizarre to describe electrician-cum-rabbi M. M. Schneerson in this way, many of the people seen as messianist view Schneerson as a demigod. They are loathe to state this explicitly, but they will assign him characteristics of God, pray to him and, when pressed, suggest that there is really no difference between him and God. Since the Rebbe was perfection personified, he is greater than any man that ever lived; ergo he is godly - omnipotent, omniscient and unlimited.

Virtually no one within the movement today is willing to deny that Schneerson was the greatest man that ever lived nor that he was perfect.

None have a problem with praying to Schneerson, using his books for divination in place of the Bible. Even amongst those viewed as moderates, "the Rebbe" is often substituted for God in normal conversation, sprinkling their remarks with comments such as "may the Rebbe help you" or "the Rebbe is watching over us."

Even among the moderate minority, the distinction between Schneerson and God is decidedly blurred. Asking adherents whether Schneerson will return as the Messiah is unlikely to yield a directly negative response.

Along a tight passageway and up an uneven stone staircase in a Safed building is the library that sits at the heart of Lubavitch. In this ancient city can be found one of the movement's pre-eminent institutions.

A few hundred students are grouped around desks in a cavernous library, in a scene identical to those in hundreds of Yeshivas around the world. The din produced by the animated discussions contrasts with the silence of non-theological academic libraries.

While some of the students, who come from all over the world, are learning traditional Jewish texts, many are studying the works of M.M. Schneerson.

A list of monthly award recipients (the prize is a set of Schneerson's complete works) reveals that of the 10 scholars who will receive prizes this month, four are named "Menachem Mendel," as is the rabbi who chose the recipients. This is not due to the rabbi favoring a namesake, for around one third of the Yeshiva's 400 students are so named.

Massive posters bearing Schneerson's image adorn every wall. A sign instructing the students to keep their dormitories tidy concludes by invoking the "Living" Rebbe.

Schneerson wrote of his father-in-law as the messiah, though the previous rebbe had recently died. Adherents believe that when the Rebbe referred to his father-in-law, this was code for the Rebbe himself.

Why do they think that Schneerson is alive? "The Rebbe was no normal human being," is the response. He was a polymath who "studied under Einstein in Berlin" before "inventing the atom bomb."

How do they view the connection between Schneerson and God? "The Rebbe is not something different from God - the Rebbe is a part of God," says a British teenaged student.

Does this not 'idolize' Schneerson, in the literal sense? "We cannot connect to God directly - we need the Rebbe to take our prayers from here to there and to help us in this world. We are told by our rabbis that a great man is like God and the Rebbe was the greatest man ever. That is how we know he is the messiah, because how could life continue without him? No existence is possible without the Rebbe."

Would they go so far as to describe the Rebbe and God as one and the same, as some extreme Messianists have done? "No, some people have gone too far and described the Rebbe as the creator.

"They say that God was born in 1902 and is now 105 years old. You can pray to the Rebbe and he will answer, and he was around since the beginning of time. But you must be careful to pray only to the Rebbe as a spiritual entity and not the body that was born in 1902."

Does the Rebbe have a will of his own? What if the Rebbe and God disagree? "That is a ridiculous question! They are not separate in any way."

So the Rebbe is a part of God. "Yes, but it is more complex than that. There is no clear place where the Rebbe ends and God begins."

Does that mean the Rebbe is infinite omnipotent and omniscient? "Yes of course," an Argentine student says in Hebrew. "God chose to imbue this world with life through a body. So that's how we know the Rebbe can't have died, and that his actual physical body must be alive. The Rebbe is the conjunction of God and human. The Rebbe is God, but he is also physical."

Chabad members have become irrecovably fixated on their dead leader. If the seemingly inexorable rise of the vocal yellow pin brigade progresses apace, the movement founded to bring rigor and intellectualism to Hasidic Judaism may well face a benighted future.

Labels: Chabad Lubavitch, Messianism, Rebbe, Schneerson

- posted by Izak @ 1:26 PM (1) comments

 
Conservative Judaism starts to worry about what it eats while it welcomes gays as rabbis
Warning To Conservative Jews: Don’t Eat That Pizza!

Movement’s top kashrut cop wants to reverse practice of eating hot dairy food in non-kosher eateries.

Stewart Ain - Staff Writer
http://www.thejewishweek.com/news/newscontent.php3?artid=13647
Friday, February 9, 2007 / 21 Shevat 5767

A survey of Conservative clergy released last week found that more than 80 percent eat warmed fish in non-kosher restaurants, prompting the chairman of the movement’s rabbinic kosher subcommittee to begin writing a legal opinion that will likely restrict what Conservative Jews may or may not eat in non-kosher restaurants.

Such a sweeping opinion, if approved by the movement’s Committee on Jewish Law and Standards, would radically change Conservative practice that has been in place for more than a generation. And it would also set Rabbi Paul Plotkin, the subcommittee chairman and a recognized expert in kashrut for the Conservative movement, on a collision course with more liberal Conservative rabbis who argue that halacha must change with the times.

“It’s been disappointing to me and a matter of personal consternation for a long period of time,” Rabbi Plotkin said of the Conservative movement’s widespread practice of eating hot dairy food in non-kosher restaurants.

“I’ve been toying with writing a responsum on the issue,” he said. “Not only do I want to see this issue revisited [by the Law Committee] but there is a misconception in the Conservative movement that Conservative Jews are permitted to eat hot food in non-kosher restaurants. That is not true.”

Rabbi Plotkin, spiritual leader of Temple Beth Am in Margate, Fla., said he expects to submit his paper by the end of the year. He said the current practice of Conservative Jews was based on a misunderstood legal opinion written in 1940 by Rabbi Max Arzt that focused on the eating of grilled fish and cooked vegetables in non-kosher restaurants in communities that lacked kosher restaurants.

“It was limited in scope and rooted in the reality of its time,” Rabbi Plotkin said. “Many of the reasons he permits grilled fish are no longer valid. ... And that teshuvah [Jewish legal opinion] does not cover how you can eat pizza from a non-kosher restaurant. I certainly do not eat, nor can I find any foundation religiously, for allowing it — even if one presumes that all cheese is kosher.”

The e-mail survey — which was conducted in January by the Jewish Theological Seminary primarily to gauge views on its Law Committee’s decision to permit gay and lesbian ordination and same-sex commitment ceremonies — was answered by 919 rabbis and 211 cantors. Although their acceptance of gays and lesbians was widely reported last week, little attention was paid to the section of the survey that dealt with patterns of observance and belief.

Rabbi Plotkin said his responsum would present an “intellectually honest and halachically valid opinion to guide Conservative Jews as to what they may and may not eat in a non-kosher restaurant.”

He said he realizes that a “more stringent position may evolve” as a result of his paper “because that is the intellectually honest position. ... The Conservative movement should not be about how many leniencies the movement can find.”

But Rabbi Barry Leff, of Toledo, Ohio, said that although he agrees with Rabbi Plotkin’s conclusion, he believes halacha, or Jewish law, has to adapt to the times. Making it stricter, as Rabbi Plotkin suggests, “would reduce the relevancy of halacha in the eyes of many.”

“Every once in a while we have to bring halacha into line with what people are doing or we lose respect for the system,” he explained. “Don’t impose something on the community unless they will abide by it,” and a change in halacha now would not be accepted by the people.

“Halacha gets determined by the people, and the rabbis follow,” Rabbi Leff pointed out, citing the case of turkey, which was unknown in the Old World.

“The rabbis wanted to ban it, but the people said it was like a chicken and had to be kosher,” he said. “The rabbis followed and had to adapt halacha.”

The same holds true for eating in non-kosher establishments, said Rabbi Leff, spiritual leader of Congregation B’nai Israel. He said he found in his own non-scientific survey of 110 Conservative rabbis in the fall of 2003 that 71 percent ate hot dairy meals in non-kosher restaurants and that 92 percent ate hot dairy meals in vegetarian restaurants that lacked rabbinic supervision.

Similarly, he said, he found that a “substantial majority” of observant Conservative Jews ate hot dairy meals in non-kosher restaurants. Last week’s survey found that 90 percent of Conservative Jewish professional leaders (educators and executives) and 97 percent of Conservative lay leaders such as synagogue presidents and board members said they eat warmed food such as fish at non-kosher restaurants. (About one-third of Jewish professional leaders do not keep kosher; 57 percent of lay leaders do not keep kosher outside of the home, the seminary survey found.)

On his own blog, Rabbi Leff argued that the danger in changing halacha in this instance “seems small compared with the benefit that will accrue from our committed people seeing that halakhah can adapt to the changing times and practices.

“The time for wrestling with this issue is long overdue, and this responsum is offered in an attempt to reconcile practice and halakhah. We believe that a seemingly-radical change in halakhah is preferable to allowing the current dissonance between law and practice to continue indefinitely.”

Rabbi Leff said he submitted this teshuvah to the Law Committee in May 2004 and that it still has not been considered. But were it considered, he said he believes it would receive the six votes necessary to be adopted. Rabbi Plotkin, however, said he rejected the paper’s arguments, saying, “If tomorrow everyone is eating pig, do you change the rules? Where does that end?”

Rabbi Kassel Abelson, chairman of the Law Committee, said his committee has left it up to “individual rabbis to make the decision about where to eat.”

“I would assume that even the Orthodox or very Orthodox would eat cold food like salads [at non-kosher restaurants],” he said. “Warm food brings another level of observance in terms of the plates it was prepared on. I presume that most restaurants are clean and the question is whether you accept it or insist [that the plates] be ritually cleansed.”

The seminary survey found also that more than one-third of Conservative rabbis and cantors believe the Torah was “written by people and not by God or by Divine inspiration.” And it found that about one-third turn lights on during Shabbat.

The poll found that 36 percent of Conservative clergy said they believe man wrote the Torah, and that 39 percent of Conservative professionals and 42 percent of lay leaders believe it. In addition, 37 percent of clergy, 17 percent of professional leaders and 6 percent of lay leaders refrain from turning on lights on Shabbat.

There are great divisions between clergy and laity on other practices as well. For instance, 64 percent of clergy refrain from driving on Shabbat, compared with 27 percent of professionals and 11 percent of lay leaders. And although 94 percent of clergy refrain from shopping on Shabbat, that is true of only 60 percent of professionals and 43 percent of lay leaders. In addition, while 83 percent of clergy pray at least three times a week, that is a practice followed by only 40 percent of professionals and 33 percent of lay leaders.

Asked about the poll results, Rabbi Joel Meyers, executive vice president of the Conservative movement’s Rabbinical Assembly, took issue with the wording of the questions. Thus, he said, the results might not indicate the true behavior of the respondents.

Rabbi Abelson said the turning on of lights on the Sabbath is in keeping with a Law Committee decision from the 1950s. What was a surprise, he said, was their response to the question about the origins of the Torah.

“I have always thought that the overwhelming majority [of rabbis] would say that even if the words were put down by human beings, they were still divinely inspired,” he said

Labels: Conservative Judaism, Kashrut, Kosher food

- posted by Izak @ 8:14 AM (0) comments

 
Chinese want to make money so they dream of the Jews
Sold on a Stereotype
In China, a genre of self-help books purports to tell the secrets of making money 'the Jewish way.'

By Ariana Eunjung Cha
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, February 7, 2007; D01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/06/AR2007020601713.html

SHANGHAI -- Showcased in bookstores between biographies of Andrew Carnegie and the newest treatise by China's president are stacks of works built on a stereotype.

One promises "The Eight Most Valuable Business Secrets of the Jewish."

Another title teases readers with "The Legend of Jewish Wealth." A third provides a look at "Jewish People and Business: The Bible of How to Live Their Lives."

In the United States, where making broad generalizations about races, cultures or religions has become unacceptable in most circles, the titles of some of these books might make people cringe. Throughout history and around the world, even outwardly innocuous and broadly accepted characterizations of Jews have sometimes formed the basis for eventual campaigns of violent anti-Semitism.

In Shanghai, which prides itself on having provided a safe haven for Jewish refugees fleeing Europe since the 1930s, some members of the city's small Jewish community are uneasy about the books' message.

These Jewish success books are "very dangerous," said Audrie Ohana, 30, who works at her family's import-export company and attended China's prestigious Fudan University. "What they say -- it's not true. In our community, it's not everybody that succeeds. We're like everyone else. Some are rich, but there are others that are very, very poor."

Nonetheless, in China, a country where glossy pictures of new billionaires have become as common as images of Mao Zedong, aspiring Chinese entrepreneurs are obsessed with getting their hands on anything they think can help them get an edge on the competition.

In the past few years, sales of "success" books have skyrocketed, publishers say, and now make up nearly a third of the works published in China, and perhaps no type of success book has been as well marketed or well received as those that purport to unveil the secrets of Jewish entrepreneurs. Many of these tomes sell upward of 30,000 copies a year and are thought of in the same inspirational way as many Americans view the "Chicken Soup for the Soul" series.

Among this booming genre's most popular books is William Hampton's "Jewish Entrepreneurial Experience and Business Wisdom." It comes packaged in a red-and-gold cover, and a banner along the top brags that it was a "gold list" bestseller in the United States. Among Hampton's credentials, according to his biography: "Business Week editor," part of the "pioneer batch of Harvard DBAs," "professor in business strategy and philosophy" with "many years of experience in Jewish studies."

More on that set of claims in a moment.

China is the fastest-growing book market in the world, with 130,000 new titles published in 2005. Sales that year reached $8.3 billion, a 50 percent jump from 2003, according to China National Publications Import and Export's data research arm.

The business success books provide idealized notions of what Chinese people should strive to become and serve as templates for teaching people who have been working at communist, state-owned enterprises for a generation how to transform themselves as capitalists.

Several of the books, despite their covers, focus on basic business acumen that has little to do with religion or culture. But others focus on explaining how Judaism has ostensibly helped Jewish people's success, even quoting extensively from the Talmud.

Practically every book features one or more case studies of the success of the Lehman brothers, the Rothschilds and other Jewish "titans of industry and captains of finance," as one author put it.

Some works incorrectly refer to J.P. Morgan (an influential Episcopalian leader) and John D. Rockefeller (a devout Baptist) as Jewish businessmen.

Yin Ri Shuai, a 29-year-old from Henan province, west of Shanghai, who is opening a cosmetics franchise, has purchased and read two such success books. Recently, he was back at the Shanghai City of Books, flipping through some recent titles.

"I feel they are interesting not only because they teach about business but because they teach about family and education and other values," Yin said.

Most Chinese people have never met a Jew -- they number fewer than 10,000 in a country of 1.3 billion people. But several of the most successful businessmen in the nation's financial capital, Shanghai, have been Jewish. The Sassoon brothers, for instance, were real-estate moguls of British descent from Baghdad who constructed the landmark Peace Hotel.

Today, one of the deans of the Jewish community in Shanghai is Ohana's father, Maurice, 57, who has lived in China for more than 10 years.

Maurice Ohana has mixed feelings about the Jewish business books. On the one hand, he believes that the books' assertions that many Jewish people value punctuality and never go back on their promises are "absolutely correct."

But the books' tendency to mix religious scripture with business lessons makes him uncomfortable. "I know very well the Talmud," he said. "They don't talk about business."

Positive stereotypes about Jews and their supposed business prowess have given the Jewish community iconic status in the eyes of the Chinese public.

The cover of January's Shanghai and Hong Kong Economy magazine wonders, "Where does Jewish people's wisdom come from?"

Jewish entrepreneurs say they are bombarded with invitations to give seminars on how to make money "the Jewish way."

Last year, a Jewish businessman's family was featured on a popular TV show. As the husband and wife gave viewers an introduction to the Jewish faith, the cameramen went around filming the family in action as they performed mundane household tasks. Reporters asked them what they ate.

Zhou Guojian, deputy dean of the Center for Jewish Studies at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, said people in China may be so fascinated by Jews because they feel both cultures share a strong entrepreneurial spirit.

In his opinion, though, there is one big difference. Many Chinese businessmen have "Chinese restaurant syndrome," Zhou said. "They are content with small-scale enterprises; they are happy just to make a living. But Jewish people want to be the best and make a huge company."

Wang Zhen, a researcher at the Center for Jewish Studies, also says he recognizes that the stereotypes can be considered anti-Semitic but thinks it's important that "even if people in China have the wrong impressions of Jewish people, the Chinese are very kind to them."

One puzzling phenomenon about the Jewish business books is that it's often unclear who wrote them. More than 50 titles are sold in China's bookstores, chain stores and other outlets.

He Xiong Fe, a visiting professor in Nankai University's literature department, estimates that more than half of the books are fakes, written by people who are not familiar with Judaism or Jewish history and who have made up their qualifications.

"There are only a few books that have value," said He, who has lectured on such topics as "Why are Jewish people so smart?" and "The mystery of the Jews."

When asked for contact information for William Hampton, author of "Jewish Entrepreneurial Experience and Business Wisdom," a representative for the book's publisher, Harbin Press, said the company obtained the manuscript from a translator and had never met the author. Several days later, the publisher said she had trouble reaching the translator so she could not provide more details about the origin of the book.

A search of international ISBNs -- the 10-digit codes that identify books published in the United States and other countries -- pulled up no hits for books by a William Hampton with a title similar to "Jewish Entrepreneurial Experience and Business Wisdom."

Harvard Business School has no record of a William Hampton in the first class of its doctorate of business administration program. Officials at Business Week magazine said there was a former employee with that name. William Hampton publishes an automobile newsletter.

Reached at his home near Detroit, Hampton said he was a former bureau chief and auto writer for the magazine, working there from 1977 to 1984, but had never served as an editor.

Moreover, he said he had no idea where the book came from. "I can confidently tell you that this is not something that I did," he said. "This would not be a topic I would be knowledgeable about in any way. It would be helpful to be Jewish, for one thing."

Staff researcher Ai Ghee Ong contributed to this report.

Labels: China, economics, Jewish business

- posted by Izak @ 5:08 AM (0) comments

 
"Poll" tells Conservative Judaism to go with the gays (what will the next poll dictate?)
Support For Gay Clergy, But Concern Over Liberal Drift

New Conservative movement poll finds wide support for gay ordination despite doubts about consistency with Jewish law.

Stewart Ain - Staff Writer
http://www.thejewishweek.com/news/newscontent.php3?artid=13612
Friday, February 2, 2007 / 14 Shevat 5767

As widely expected, a large majority of Conservative rabbis, cantors, professionals and lay leaders support gays and lesbians becoming rabbis and cantors, although about half have their doubts as to whether it is compatible with Jewish law. And a majority of professional and lay leaders admitted to being “confused” and “somewhat embarrassed” by a rabbinic law committee’s decision in December to both accept and reject gay ordination.

The findings, the most complete portrait of the thinking and practice of Conservative Jewish clergy and leaders, came from a national survey commissioned by the movement’s Jewish Theological Seminary.

The survey of more than 5,000 Conservative Jewish leaders, released this week, concluded that they are committed to halacha or Jewish law, as well as to supporting women in the clergy and in favor of same-sex commitment ceremonies. But, the study said, “It cannot be denied that about half the rabbis, cantors and JTS students have some doubts as to whether the liberalizing stance [permitting homosexual ordination] is compatible with Jewish law.”

In addition, while 69 percent of American Jewish Conservative clergy supported gay and lesbian ordination, 82 percent of their counterparts in Canada were opposed. There was an even split among Conservative clergy in Israel and other countries.

Also, the survey said that “a substantial minority — about one-third with a clear opinion on the matter — oppose the move to greater liberalization” in the movement. As many as 42 percent of Conservative clergy believe the decisions of the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards “blur the boundary between Conservative and Reform Judaism.” In addition, 83 percent of the clergy and rabbinical students believe the committee’s decisions “widen the gap between Conservatism and Orthodoxy.”

“Thus, the decisions clearly raise the possibility among many that the Conservative movement has taken a move to the theological left, further parting company with the Orthodox, and further approaching the Reform movement,” the study said.

The survey’s release came just two days after Daniel Nevins, the senior rabbi of Adat Shalom Synagogue in Farmington Hills, Mich., was chosen to replace Rabbi William Lebeau as dean of the JTS rabbinical school, effective July 1. The seminary’s incoming chancellor, Arnold Eisen, made the selection. Rabbi Nevins was co-author of the most liberal paper approved in December by the movement’s Committee on Jewish Law and Standards that favored homosexual ordination and same-sex commitment ceremonies.

The survey found widespread opposition to rabbis officiating at mixed marriages and to recognizing as a Jew the child of a non-Jewish mother and a Jewish father. The Reform movement follows patrilineal descent; Conservative and Orthodox Judaism do not.

“The consensus around these issues speaks to the underlying unity and distinctiveness of the Conservative movement,” said Steven M. Cohen, the sociologist who conducted the e-mail survey of 18,676 persons and received responses from 4,861, plus another 722 who answered the questionnaire on a public Web site.

Most accepting of homosexuals as clergy were the professional leaders of the movement, with 76 percent in favor. Fifty-eight percent of rabbinical students favored the move, as did 65 percent of rabbis and 67 percent of cantors.

Cohen said he found that Conservative Jewish support for women clergy “implied” their support for gay and lesbian clergy.

“Those who had hesitations about women as leaders were associated with those who opposed [ordination of] gays and lesbians,” he said. “If you had a problem with women, you had a problem with gays. And since women themselves are more likely to accept women as cantors and rabbis, they are more likely than men” to support homosexual ordination.

The survey found that 86 percent of women favored gay and lesbian ordination, compared with 60 percent of men who held that view.

Cohen explained that “women are more pro-women” than men and that “women tend to be younger than men and younger people tend to be more pro-ordination.”

The survey found also what Cohen said was a “strong relationship between self-defined traditional” Jews and their ideology, with more traditional Conservative Jews opposing homosexual ordination and liberal Conservative Jews favoring it.

In addition, Cohen said he found “the more sacred the position [in the Conservative movement], the greater the hesitation about accepting gays.” Thus, there was a greater hesitation in accepting gays as clergy than as educators or synagogue presidents.

“Our intent was and is to know what Conservative Jews — rabbis and cantors, educators and executives, board members and students — think about this important matter: admitting and ordaining/investing openly gay and lesbian students in our rabbinical and cantorial schools,” Arnold Eisen, the seminary’s chancellor-elect, said.

The results will be used to assist seminary faculty, synagogue leaders and rabbis in determining policy as a result of a recent decision by the movement’s Committee on Jewish Law and Standards to permit the ordination of gays and lesbians. The heads of the movement’s other seminaries have already discussed the issue with Eisen. He is also receiving feedback during his nationwide “listening tour,” his meetings with students, and through the seminary’s Web site. Faculty discussions are also ongoing.

“Of particular note,” Eisen said in a prepared statement, “is the remarkable unity of Conservative Jews nationwide in their support of the centrality of halacha as a key principle of Conservative Judaism. The survey gives us data on this score as one factor among many to bear in mind as we consider a complex and controversial decision that will undoubtedly have a major impact on the future direction of JTS and the Conservative Movement. A final decision on this matter is expected this spring.”

The survey found that slightly more than half of the professional and lay leaders admitted to being “confused” by the law committee’s split decision, and 67 percent of clergy and 58 percent of professional and lay leaders admitted to being “somewhat embarrassed” by it.

The survey found that rabbis favored admitting gays and lesbians to the seminary’s rabbinical and cantorial schools 65-28 percent. Cantors approved the move by a similar margin (67-27 percent), while lay leaders were split 68-22 percent.

Rabbinical students voted 58-32 in favor of admitting gays and lesbians to the rabbinical school. Cantorial students approved it 58-21 percent and other JTS students favored it 40-21 percent.

Among Conservative educators, executive directors, and other professionals, the vote in favor was 76-16 percent. Lay leaders favored it by 68-22 percent, and students and others —primarily public access respondents — favored the move by 70-20 percent.

Labels: Conservative Judaism, female rabbis, Gay clergy

- posted by Izak @ 1:44 AM (0) comments