What is anti-semitism, an illuminating discussion with a friend

 

Antisemitism, Jew-hatred, is an ugly, disturbing, yet puzzling and resilient social phenomenon, and it takes many forms. It is similar in many ways to crude racism, but also different. We seem forever to be wondering what it is, why it exists, and how to respond to it. In the linked column, from the NYT a few years ago, Brett Stevens (formerly of the WSJ) tackles the question “what is it?” and, as usual, does a superb job of providing a guide for the perplexed. 

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/12/opinion/antisemitism-jewish-israel-war.html 

My friend Kenny Hymen recently sent it to me, with some comments of his own, and a poignant story about his recent experience as a tourist in Morocco, that I felt compelled to share with you. 

First, Kenny’s “random thoughts”  on the column:

 ·  The Progressive Left and the hard right are very focused on identity politics. And that focus is primarily on the victims, the persecuted, oppressed, disadvantaged, disenfranchised etc. And there must be someone to blame for that.

·    I hear little of the success stories ie those who’ve risen from disadvantaged backgrounds and become successful, be that in business, professions, science, philanthropy. Many of these success stories are Jews and many are also black.

· Too many Jews have become success stories, creating a pent up loathing from the broader community… jealousy and “they’re to blame for the disadvantaged and less fortunate”. Must have ripped them off. Look how many billionaires are Jews. Over millenia, Jews have been too successful, especially as forced refugees/immigrants in new countries. We all know that many immigrants have a higher need/passion for success, to replace what they may have had before and especially to ensure that their children thrive. I would say that almost all Jewish immigrants have this passion…. And we’ve been on the move for over 2 millenia so we apply this passion to succeed to successive countries.

·   Then there’s the quest for education. Let me share a story of my lightning visit to Tangier and the deep discussions with my guide Ahmed (not his real name) on 

the history and roll of Jews in Morocco.

 “they (Jews) were so successful.  They built up trading businesses that helped the country’s economy.  The rulers liked the Jews. The Jewish merchants acquired wealth and they bought beautiful apartments.  (he showed me a street where 90% of apartments were owned by Jews 50-150 years ago). My father worked for a Jewish merchant.  Such a wonderful man.  So honest.  No contract signed… just a handshake. He gave my father a small share of some of his businesses. My father did well and bought a few flats (apartments). The merchant told my father he must educate his children so that they can succeed. My father decided to move to a different area close to a good school.” 

All 5 of the siblings went to university … Ahmed did a 5yr linguistics degree. he speaks 5 languages. 

So Ahmed, “how did the other Moroccans feel about these Jewish merchants and their families ?” 

“They hated them.  So jealous.  They must be stealing money from us … “ SOUND FAMILIAR? 

This to me is a classic summary of the plight of the Jews and the regular rekindling of antisemitism. As long as the Jews are suffering and not succeeding, antisemitism is percolating without boiling over. But once you start succeeding and being noticed. Woe betide.

 When I asked Ahmed what he thought about the Abraham Accords (to which Morocco was a signatory) he knew nothing about them.  If a successful university graduate knows nothing about the Abraham Accords no wonder the "Arab Street" is on a different planet from their rulers. 

[And now Kenny turns to modern Israel]: 

Until the 1980’s Israel was generally regarded by the West as the “victim” and fitted well into the community’s view of victimhood. Being constantly attacked by multiple Arab armies. 1948, 1967 & 1973. Fending them off bravely … little Israel. 

And when Palestinian hijackers landed Israeli hostages at Entebbe in 1976, what country could launch a successful rescue mission in a foreign country, aside from Israel? (Jimmy Carter couldn’t do it in 1979   he crashed his helicopters In the desert). 

But slowly the tide has turned.

Israel, drawing on the Jewish passion for education & science and the independent, unstructured thinking and “can do” ethos embedded in the IDF, became the Startup nation. Some of the most cutting-edge technology of the past 20 yrs comes directly or indirectly from Israel. Business and investors applaud that but progressives hate it. Big business and Tech exploiting the masses. Granted some of the technology can be used for nefarious purposes as can electricity, nuclear energy, social media etc. 

The economic success of the Startup Nation now made Israel to the oppressor - no longer seen as a victim.  

Following the 2000 Camp David offer from Barak, that was turned down by Arafat, the Israeli appetite for a settlement with Palestinians has steadily receded, helped a lot by the “reign” of Netanyahu.  Settlements, the closest to the current fad for Colonization, have ramped up this narrative. Many in the world see Israeli settlers in a similar way to Russians in the Donbass. The combination of extreme right-wing nationalists and Haredi fundamentalists has significantly weakened global support for Israel, from Jews and non-Jews alike. 

So, we are in a situation where ugly Israel is a global oppressor/colonialist, an economic powerhouse “relative to size of population” and becoming a pariah when it defends itself. It fits perfectly into the “oppressor” camp. Think Al Assad/Russia bombing Fallujah/Mosul, Putin’s bombing Mariupol, Bucha

And the percolating, pent up loathing of mainstream communities for Jews has been unleashed. It plays perfectly into the key drivers of antisemitism.

 What can reverse this?

 Do we need to return to victimhood?

The Nazis accomplished that pretty well and the world tolerated Jews for a good 35 years after WWII 

 The Haredi drive to eliminate Science and Maths from Haredi education may be a perverse attempt to cut out the education that tends to drive Jews’ success. Produce theologists with no broader education?

 Our discussion ends with me mentioning to Kenny Natan Shiransky’s incisive test for identifying speech that is anti-semitic. The three D's for whether speech is antisemitic. When is Demonizes, when it delegitimates and/or when it engages in double standards.

What is a "just war"?

 

President Trump, excercising authority as the commander in chief, and in consultation with advisors, bombed the nuclear facilities in Iran - clearly an act of war. How should we feel about this?

War is a particularly problematic issue for libertarians - one that occasions deep divisions between them. There are some who, almost reflexively, oppose any kind of war, as a particular kind of violence, no matter what the surrounding circumstances. Anarcho-libertarians can find no place for it, they question the very existence of government itself. I have never understood this position, though I agree heartily with their penchant for dramatic reductions in government scope and size. When the prospect of abolishing government becomes plausible, i will gladly have that discussion.

 In the meantime, governments exist, and there is evil in the world. Surely, if we sanction the action of self-defense, we must acknowledge the validity of a just war. The justifiable divisions of opinion revolve around how one interprets and analyzes the current reality. Is the threat really existential in nature? What actions will deter it? What actions will make it worse? How much damage and suffering will it cause, to whom? Can we rely on our fallible, corruptible leaders to get it right, etc.

 I don't have answers to these things. No one does. The future is unknowable, and the minds of others are impenetrable. But, for what its worth, here is my non-expert opinion. 

I support the bombing. I buy the argument that Iran is an existential threat, not just to Israel but to the very fabric of our western civilization. For many decades now, the threat has been building, Iran has sponsored numerous terrorist organizations and specific incidents, like the bombing of the JCC in Argentina, the attacks by the Houthis, Hezbollah and most recently Oct. 7. Iran paid for the incredible tunnel infrastructure built by Hamas, for one purpose only, the destruction of Israel. Thousands of people around the world have been killed and injured, including many Americans. The official Iranian position is one of hostility to the West and the commitment to destroy Israel and exterminate Jews. This is part of a religious commitment in Shia doctrine to achieve the second coming. 

The nuclear threat? The argument that it is for peaceful purposes, like energy generation, is implausible. The level of enrichment achieved is not necessary for that. So what is it for? Some people say "deterrence". Against whom? No, given the level of fanaticism and demonstrated beligerance, I personally would not be inclined to gamble that Iran does not intend to use a bomb once acquired. 

So, while I certainly have my differences with Donald Trump, the man and the president, I am glad he did this. Now, it is true, we will need to deal with the fallout. Thankfully, this is not like Bush's Iraq invasion, which was a disgrace, based on lies and personal grudges, that caused massive distruction in the long run, with which we are still dealing. This should be a very limited action. Let us hope so. 

Just one man's opinion.

From my FB page. Today's musing minute

 Today’s musing minute

*SPOILER ALERT*, IF YOU HAVE NOT SEEN THE TV SERIES “YOUR FRIENDS AND NEIGHBORS” OR ARE CURRENTLY WATCHING IT, WATCH THE WHOLE OF IT BEFORE READING THIS IF YOU WANT TO AVOID THE SPOILER.

--------------------------------

Clearly, art is often a vehicle for social philosophy, even propaganda. The extent to which a work appeals to its viewers depends very much on the conscious and unconscious values that they hold dear, that they relate to, that motivate and energize them in their imagination of a better world.

I found the series interesting, engaging, sometimes amusing and frustrating. Interesting because it is full of beautiful talented actors doing their thing against a backdrop of a beautiful affluent neighborhood. Engaging, because the situations are sometimes cleverly ironic, also sometimes sad, in an exaggerated but familiar way. But, also, very frustrating, because of the constant, but unmissable, sub-text of social criticism and perverse moral judgement resonant with the “social justice” credo pervasive within the chattering class of our current society.

The story is rather simple. Andrew Cooper (Coop), [John Hamm], is a regular hard-working ambitious American guy who makes good, better than he could have imagined, and gets to live the “good life” in a fabulously affluent suburb, with his glamorous wife and two slightly troubled kids. Except that the “good life” turns out to be not so good, full of stress and spite and trivialities, which Coop only comes to realize after suddenly losing his job as a superstar hedge fund manager, having earlier lost his marriage and become estranged from his kids. The series is about how he tries to cope with the new calamitous world in which he finds himself. Now, suddenly in his life, everything is dark.

I will leave those details to the show. A driving theme, emphasized by Coop’s recurring eloquent third-person narrative to the viewing audience, is the revelatory value of what has happened to him. As a consequence of these unnecessary losses (a result of misallocating his time and energy by pursuing misguided ambition for material and status-achieving goals) his eyes are opened by degrees to the hitherto hidden reality of his pathetic existence as a “rich person”.

In his new reality staring poverty and deprivation in the face, he begins to realize the offensive nature of his friends’ lives, particularly their penchant for acquiring useless mega-expensive stuff, which they never use, and sometimes don’t even remember they have. Zero-sum thinking is seductively present throughout this. I could almost here the script writer thinking: “they have all this stuff while so many good folk are struggling and starving. Its unjust, isn’t it?” One could almost hear the “social justice warriors” cheering.

So, as if motivated by this, Coop decides, since they don’t need all this useless treasure (watches, paintings, jewelry, … ) he might as well steal them, and fence them for a fraction of their market value, in order to bridge the financial gap in his fractured life until he can figure out something else. Coop the narrator suggests he should have known better, but not because it was after all, theft, and clearly and blatantly immoral, but because the system is rigged atainst him.

He gets greedy and finds his circumstances getting more and more entangled, ultimately facing a charge for a murder he did not commit. In a scene near the end of the final season’s episode, he confronts the person who has framed him for the murder, and asks her why she was prepared to sacrifice his life for her purposes. To which she illuminatingly replies, “because you don’t deserve that life!” in contrast to herself who worked up from the bottom and sacrificed more than he did to get it. And, strange to tell, Coop admits he basically agrees with her – his illuminated conscience speaking aloud.

I saw many aspects of an upside down morality. One of particular interest was the common misconception of the nature of “value” – what it means, what it is. So, when Coop makes contact with a tough, no nonsense inner city woman (who somehow seems to be Jewish) who is an expert fence for stolen goods, she lectures him about not understanding the value of real concrete physical things as against the (imaginary?) value of the pieces of paper he is used to pushing around in his hedge fund job. She is saying to him, you have left the imaginary world of parasites on Wall Street and now find yourself in the scary real world of objective merchandise.

So, when suddenly, things turn back around, and Coop is offered his old job back plus more, and is in a position to return to the $100K membership country club, and all the other good things, he strings things along before dramatically deciding to turn his back on this cesspool of richness and return to the honest, decent, socially just job of burglarizing his neighbors. Are the viewers supposed to applaud his clarity, his courage? Am I being cynical and uncharitable? You can decide.

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Today’s musing minute - from my FB page. Facing some important inconvenient truths.

Facing some inconvenient truths.

The world is a wonderful and terrifying place, in which the most sublime human virtues and the most unimaginable human depravity are revealed.

There are many examples. Let’s consider the Nazis, lets note the many acts of courage and compassion that saved lives. And let’s note the bigger reality of what happened as this sophisticated, “cultured” European nation descended into the moral abyss. I have no doubt that millions of decent German people lived through this, alongside the monsters. How much did they know? What did they do if they knew, what could they have done? The most common response no doubt was accommodation, sometimes uncomfortable, sometimes unconscious, eyes averted. What would I have done?

This is not a completely hypothetical question. I grew up in a morally bankrupt racist society, a cruel, crude, police state. And when it came to decision-making time, I left. I left, not only as an act of moral conviction, but also, let it be said, out of fear, out of fear of lapsing into quiet complicity (as most had done) or the existential consequences of resistance.

Now, especially since October 7, I look at the world and wonder, wonder why so many ordinary “western” people find it impossible to condemn the massacre of Oct. 7, and others who even celebrate it, and wonder how many there are who are simply averting their eyes from the veritable explosion of Jew-hatred, in America and all over the world. But, mostly I wonder, and worry about, the persistent existence of Nazism (and, if one can credit it, even worse) in the world today.

Again, I have no doubt that, in the Muslim world at large, there are millions of decent, loving people who want to live in peace and let others live in peace, no matter who these others are. But, the elephant of an inconvenient truth is that there are also millions of “ordinary” Muslims who do not regard Oct. 7 as a moral problem, and who firmly harbor the belief that a state of Israel, ruled by non-Muslims, as a secular state, is unacceptable, and that it is a religious imperative to fix this, some would say by any means, indeed even recommend by the extermination of the Jews, there and everywhere (and after them it will be time to deal with the other infidels), and others, perhaps the majority who would prefer to eschew violence while, nevertheless, dismantling the state of Israel. That this belief is so widespread is testimony to the power of sustained (religious ) indoctrination, starting at childhood.

This truth is apparently quite opaque to the majority in the west, who shrink from the thought that there could be cultures in the world that completely reject the western values of tolerance, especially freedom of religion, indeed believe that the world should be ruled by the religious law of the one true religion. Oh, of course, they know about this, but have convinced themselves that it is simply the extreme fringe beliefs of a minority, and that the rest can be made in time to accept the self-evident truths that underlie western civilization. They cannot contemplate the numbers arrayed against this and the absolute impossibility, of easily reforming this “death cult”. It has existed for centuries in great number, and now, in the greatest numbers ever.

How to deal with a death cult that is out to destroy your culture and your civilization? It is not a military problem, though military problems are involved. It is a cultural problem. It entails the awareness and application of counter indoctrination, that will take generations, but the sooner it starts the better. At home and abroad, an awareness of the importance and achievements of western values need to be hammered home, contra the woke folk agenda. And, in the meantime the unacceptable actions of the death cult promoters need to be vigorously resisted.

States "defecting" from the anti-western Muslim alliance are most welcome. Will it be reliable and will it be enough?

Antisemitism as a response to the massacre of Jews

 

Watch it here:

Today's musing minute - art as woke social philosophy

 

Today’s musing minute

Clearly, art is often a vehicle for social philosophy, even propaganda. The extent to which a work appeals to its viewers depends very much on the conscious and unconscious values that they hold dear, that they relate to, that motivate and energize them in their imagination of a better world.

I found the series both interesting, amusing and frustrating. Interesting because it is full of beautiful talented actors doing their thing against a backdrop of a beautiful affluent neighborhood. Amusing, because the situations are sometimes cleverly ironic, also sometimes sad, in an exaggerated but familiar way. But, also, very frustrating, because of the constant, but unmissable, sub-text of social criticism and perverse moral judgement resonant with the “social justice” credo pervasive within the chattering class of our current society.

The story is rather simple. Andrew Cooper (Coop), [John Hamm], is a regular hard-working ambitious American guy who makes good, better than he could have imagined, and gets to live the “good life” in a fabulously affluent suburb, with his glamorous wife and two slightly troubled kids. Except that the “good life” turns out to be not so good, full of stress and spite and trivialities, which Coop only comes to realize after suddenly losing his job as a superstar hedge fund manager, having earlier lost his marriage and become estranged from his kids. The series is about how he tries to cope with the new calamitous world in which he finds himself. Now, suddenly in his life, everything is dark.

I will leave those details to the show. A driving theme, emphasized by Coop’s recurring eloquent third-person narrative to the viewing audience, is the revelatory value of what has happened to him. As a consequence of these unnecessary losses (a result of misallocating his time and energy by pursuing misguided ambition for material and status-achieving goals) his eyes are opened by degrees to the hitherto hidden reality of his pathetic existence as a “rich person”.

In his new reality staring poverty and deprivation in the face, he begins to realize the offensive nature of his friends’ lives, particularly their penchant for acquiring useless mega-expensive stuff, which they never use, and sometimes don’t even remember they have. Zero-sum thinking is seductively present throughout this. I could almost here the script writer thinking: “they have all this stuff while so many good folk are struggling and starving. Its unjust, isn’t it?” One could almost hear the “social justice warriors” cheering.

So, as if motivated by this, Coop decides, since they don’t need all this useless treasure (watches, paintings, jewelry, … ) he might as well steal them, and fence them for a fraction of their market value, in order to bridge the financial gap in his fractured life until he can figure out something else. Coop the narrator suggests he should have known better, but not because it was after all, theft, and clearly and blatantly immoral, but because the system is rigged atainst him.

He gets greedy and finds his circumstances getting more and more entangled, ultimately facing a charge for a murder he did not commit. In a scene near the end of the final season’s episode, he confronts the person who has framed him for the murder, and asks her why she was prepared to sacrifice his life for her purposes. To which she illuminatingly replies, “because you don’t deserve that life!” in contrast to herself who worked up from the bottom and sacrificed more than he did to get it. And, strange to tell, Coop admits he basically agrees with her – his illuminated conscience speaking aloud.

I saw many aspects of an upside down morality. One of particular interest was the common misconception of the nature of “value” – what it means, what it is. So, when Coop makes contact with a tough, no nonsense inner city woman (who somehow seems to be Jewish) who is an expert fence for stolen goods, she lectures him about not understanding the value of real concrete physical things as against the (imaginary?) value of the pieces of paper he is used to pushing around in his hedge fund job. She is saying to him, you have left the imaginary world of parasites on Wall Street and now find yourself in the scary real world of objective merchandise.

So, when suddenly, things turn back around, and Coop is offered his old job back plus more, and is in a position to return to the $100K membership country club, and all the other good things, he strings things along before dramatically deciding to turn his back on this cesspool of richness and return to the honest, decent, socially just job of burglarizing his neighbors. Are the viewers supposed to applaud his clarity, his courage? Am I being cynical and uncharitable? You can decide.

From my FB page. Today's musing minute - What does the 2024 election reveal?

 Between the group of euphoric highs and devastated lows, it is hard to decide who is more arrogant. Arrogant people fly higher and fall harder. No matter what the result, there was going to be a lot of VERY unhappy people. Meantime, stepping back, what did we learn? What happened that was not expected?

Some of us wondered: who are the real Americans? What do the silent majority really think and feel in their hearts. I think we found out. It turns out “average” Americans were not so easily manipulated by a well-oiled seemingly powerful Democratic party establishment, nor deterred by the alarming disarray of what remains of the Republican party. The attempt to wag the dog failed miserably.

It seems to me what we saw, very ironically, was a significant number of voters who were spooked and insulted by the chutzpah of the Democratic Party to try and get them to vote for someone as abysmally unprepared as Kamala Harris. So, ironically, they did not vote for Trump, they voted against Harris. A surprising number of Democratic voters crossed party lines, very few went the other way.

Stepping back from the widely accepted aberrant personality of the president elect, which much of media commentary was about, the voters in general were more concerned with the issues, and the lies surrounding them. The swing within minority groups, including among the Jews of America, was beyond the imagination of the Democratic party elites. So, very surprisingly, the election turned out not to be about Trump the toxic narcissist, or at least, certainly not only about him. Front and center was inflation (the elites told lower income folks they just imagined it), immigration, taxation, Israel and Ukraine. (As unpredictable as Trump might be, many shuddered at the thought of Harris tackling the intricacies and subtleties of foreign policy.)

And looking deeper it is possible to see the sparks of a fundamental ideological realignment in America. Neither of the two main parties is what they used to be, especially the Democrats whose current mix of transformative policy positions strikes “reasonable” Americans as very un-American in its arrogance and scope. Disillusionment with crazy, costly, irrational climate policy, high taxes and uncontrolled spending that evidently has not done much good for anyone, and more. And, the Republican party too, has moved far from the Party of Reagan toward an embrace of big brother government on some issues. The politicians are out of touch with the silent majority. One wonders how this will play out, what steps they will take to course correct and what changes to policy platforms this will bring. Are we at a pivotal moment?

I confess that some of this gives me a bit more hope than I had. It could have been much worse. Many voters did not vote for anyone for president, they voted against the alternative they feared and resented most. The swings in the votes for the Senate and the House suggest it was much more than Trump’s personality.

Perhaps the biggest surprise is the complete collapse of the Democratic party in this election. There are simply no redeeming results for them. Every metric that is remotely relevant went against them. Just how bad it was is expressed by the splash of red ink covering the entire map, with a few blue spaces peeking out here and there. And if you take out California, with its whopping 54 votes, the imbalance is mind blowing. And when we realize that much of California is populated by sleep-walking dreamers wondering around in their impenetrable bubble, completely out of touch with the rest of the country and with reality itself, this sharpens the contrast.

But now, we have to contend with a presidency of unpredictables, and we better hope, that, one way or another, it strikes the right balance that will push us closer to the real Americans.

The Meaning of October 7

Monday October 7, 2024 was one year since the savage attack and massacre launched by Hamas in Southern Israel. Over 100 of the hostages taken are still in captivity. What does October 7 mean? 

The linked presentation is an extended version of a talk I gave on September 26 to the Bastiat Society of Dallas – entitled 

ANTISEMITIS AND THE DECLINE OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION 

I know the slides contain a lot of text. You can pause the audio if you want to read them carefully, but the audio covers it all. 

As always I am happy to discuss anything.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sEGC2Jh1WvA&ab_channel=PeterLewin 

You can access the transcropt here.

Antisemitism and the delcine of the wes^.pdf

From my FB page. On the implications of the existence of Jews who are anti-Israel.

 Today’s musing minute. We live in anxious times.

What starts in academia does not stay isolated in academia.

As many who read this feed have noted, and some even written books about, American higher education is in a state of crisis. It has lost its way. It has abandoned the basic precepts upon which Western civilization depends – that scholarly discourse should relentlessly pursue truth through unbiased investigation and dialogue.

Many, most, of us have known this for decades, and worried about the future. Would America and the civilized world come to its senses? What would it take?

The answers are not yet in. But the unfolding of the terrible events of October 7, and, particularly, the perverse reactions to them, have penetrated the consciousness of some of the so-called “liberals” who thought the moral high ground was with the progressive camp of left-wing fascists. Time will tell how things will be when the dust settles.

In the meantime, I will share with you a personal experience.

I just got out of a Faculty Senate meeting, the second in two weeks, in which a central focus was the recent police action that broke up an SJP (Students for Justice in Palestine) encampment on campus . The senate was outraged, or at least some vocal members were. As might be predicted, the conversation soon broadened to a discussion of the Israel-Gaza conflict.

I, and those of like mind, do not know where our faculty at large stand on the issue. The senate is a very small body. Our faculty is over 1,000. We (the likemindeds) really wanted to push back against the condemnation of the police action and some of the self-righteous gratuitous comments of the faculty from last meeting. I was really content to observe in silence.

But, then, one young (self-righteous) faculty member got it into her head to assure the members of the faculty present that even though she was Jewish, “plenty” of our Jewish faculty sympathize with the suffering of the people of Gaza.

That could not stand without a response. I made two points.

1. It should be clear that those who criticize the proclamations and behavior of SJP, particularly for anti-Israel vitriol that is hardly distinguishable from antisemitism, sympathize every bit as much with the people of Gaza as do the members of SJP. If people really sympathize with the Palestinians in Gaza and elsewhere, they should be agitating loudly for the release of the hostages and the surrender of the barbarians who lead Hamas (after all they are criminals), which would bring about an end to Israel’s defensive war. The absence of enthusiasm for such agitation and the presence of enthusiasm for anti-Israel bashing, speaks volumes. (That anyone should feel the need to make such a statement, as she did, is a really perverse manifestation of Jewish guilt.)

2. No one should be under any illusion that the presence of Jews among the members of SJP obscures or negates the clearly anti-semitic nature of their proclamations and behaviors.

I could have said more, but I think it sufficed to get a few people’s attention.

Upside down at Harvard

Today's musing minute. 

Some may not know about it, others may remember it. I refer to the firing of Lawrence Summers as president of Harvard not so long ago. Comparing the cases of the firing of Summers and Gay is very informative, very revealing of the mindset of the decision-makers at Harvard - for some time now.

Summers was fired for the very reasons Gay was hired, and why her firing was so strongly resisted. Lawrence Summers is a white male with a distinguished academic publication and research record and unimpeachable scholarly integrity. He also proved to be an able administrator with extensive experience at the highest levels of government. He was fired because of his acadimic integrity, and because his race and gender aggravated his sin in the eyes of his critics. His sin was to express an unacceptable opinion come to as a result of his research. Even though he is a clearly identified "liberal" his careful examination of the intriguing disproportionate representation of men in the STEM fields led him to conclude that this was a matter of a difference in the distribution of IQs between males and females (for whatever reason) and *not* a result of discrimination. Apparently this opinion, whether having merit or not, was completely unacceptable and he was hounded out of office. 

Keep this in mind while considering Claudine Gay's decision to obfuscate on the acceptability of calling for genocide of Jews, or, if excused as conforming to a legal technicality, her engaging in serial plagiarism. Apparently both were worthy of a strenuous defense, not only because of their political correctness but also because Gay's race and gender made it "excusable". 

 What irony that in the very letter announcing her departure, they had the chutzpah to suggest that she was the *victim* of racial discrimination, when, in reality, she had obviously been the temporary big time beneficiary of it!

Making sense of the complicated mess in Gaza

 

An irreverent discourse on religion

 

An irreverent discourse on religion  

#1: The first question is: Is there something beyond our comprehension that relates to the existence and functioning of the universe?

Answer: Yes, Why should we think that humans, limited as they are to comprehending only three dimensions, could not be ignorant of some kind of bigger picture? We don’t know what we cannot know, so we must acknowledge this possibility. We cannot judge it in the light of our logic or experience, because it goes beyond that.

So, I conclude, it is not implausible, but we just don’t know.

#2: The second question: Does this imply anything about the nature of that transcendental power, call it God, that we acknowledge is both possible and about which we can know nothing?

Answer: Absolutely not. It certainly does not imply anything about the nature of some posited (assumed) super powerful being. There is no connection between #1 and claims about the nature of God.

Technically, #1 is necessary, but, in no way, sufficient, for anything specific about God.

#3. What then is the status of religious teachings?

Answer: These are of the nature of social myths – social mythology is incredibly significant in how societies function and are able to cope with difficult things.

But these religious teachings are not matters about which we can have no judgement. They are framed in human terms, relate to human experience, appeal, when it suits their protagonists, to human logic and so on. They are about specifics, not about the vague proposition of a transcendental power as in #1. There is no bridge between #1 and these specifics.

#4: So what are some of the specifics? God is distinguish by three remarkable characteristics.

a.  God is all-good. (omnibenevolent)

b.     God is all-powerful (omnipotent)

c.      God is all-knowing (omniscient)

 Two things can be immediately said about these three attributes.

1.     Where do they come from? I honestly have no idea. They seem to be made up to suit the narrative. The most common answer is that these attributes and many other things, are revealed by God to us, in texts and in oral laws passed down. This proposition will be examined later.

2.     They are contradictory. Not all three of them can be true at the same time; at most two of them can be simultaneously true, using human logic. 

#5. The contradictions (inconsistencies)

b and c are possible. It is possible for God to be all knowing and all powerful. No contradiction. But while there is no contradiction, their joint occurrence is incompatible with the existence of free choice, which is an absolutely necessary condition of individual human responsibility. If we include in “all-knowing” knowledge of the future, which is definitely part of Jewish religious belief, then God knows what each of us will choose at every point in our lives. This means that, in a fundamental sense, our actions are already predetermined, even though we don’t know it. We have only the illusion, but not the reality, of free choice. For true choice, the future must be not only unknown, but undetermined. For choice to be truly free, it must be possible that God can be surprised by it, does not know which of any alternatives we will choose. Only then does it make sense to hold individuals responsible for their actions, for their bad choices. Otherwise, they simply choose what God made them choose by the way he made them. 

a and b cannot occur together unless we mean something very different by the word “good”, something absurd and perverse.  Experience tells us that some very bad things happen. If God is all powerful, he could prevent this. If he were all-good, he would prevent this. The occurrence of bad things, suggests that either a or b can be true, but not both. God may be all-powerful but not all-good in that he allows bad things to happen. Or, more attractively, God may be all-good, but helpless to prevent bad things from happening. 

Some people try to defend against these conclusions by changing the meaning of “good”. Things just appear bad to us limited humans, but, actually “everything happens for the good”. This saves the logic, but perverts its meaning. For many people, it is just not believable and is perverse. Why would a merciful God subject innocent people to suffering for some “greater good” about which they are ignorant? Equally perverse is the idea that this is one of the things that God knows but we cannot know. This is an unsatisfying, all-purpose answer that stifles all further inquiry. It can apply to any question. If God made us in his image and as reasoning beings, why would he present us with such a stark contradiction and not give us any explanation? 

a and c can occur together. It is possible for God to be all knowing and all-good, while being helpless to prevent bad things, as with a and b. 

So, obviously, a,b and c cannot logically occur together, cannot be simultaneously true. 

#6. The origins of religious beliefs. (I will confine myself to Judaism, but the analysis applies to any organized religion.) 

In addition to the three attributes of God discussed above, religious teachings contain a large number of commandments, prohibitions, and historical narratives. These commandments and prohibitions intrude into every aspect of individual life. The historical narratives serve, in large part, as sources and exemplars of the moral commandments and prohibitions.  What is the ultimate source and justification of these narratives, prohibitions and commandments? 

The answer is that all is revealed to us by God himself in holy texts or by oral law passed down over the generations, until they too were written in canonical texts. Note how far this is from #1. 

According to the biblical text, the most important revelation occurred at Mt. Sinai in the presence of hundreds of thousands of witnesses. Previous and later communication between God and other individuals occur in other places. What is the source of this claim? The text itself tells of its revelation by God. So, credibility for the text as divine is supposedly provided by the authority of the text itself, including the existence of the corroborating witnesses. In short, we have an argument supported by its assumptions. 

Apart from this, the divine nature of the various texts considered part of the definitive source of all Jewish law, halacha, is highly implausible given some of its characteristics.

1. 1.Numerous contradictions and inconsistencies in both narrative and reasoning regarding laws. In fact these inconsistencies provide much of the material for extended discussion in commentary by the sages (rabbis) leading to their reconciliation. From the start, since the text is considered to be divine, the inconsistencies must be apparent and not real. We, humans have been misled by our limited understanding and need wise rabbis to provide the reconciliations formed by their superior understanding of the definitive texts.
2. 2.   The historical accuracy of some of the narrative is questionable. Perhaps the most obvious is the assertion that the planet is less than 6,000 years old.
3. 3.   Textual analysis of the various texts suggests they were written over a long period of time by different people. The styles and language structures are different.
4. 4.  At numerous places in the biblical texts supernatural forces are reported, such as the splitting of the sea, the halting of the passage of the sun to allow Joshua to complete his invasion, Jacob wrestling with an angel, etc. Such supernatural occurrences are posited to have ceased at some point and are no longer part of our world. This strains belief. 

The most plausible assumption is that these texts are an impressive combination of moral allegories, historical narratives, and law (the commentaries) drawn from the history and the allegorical stories – one that provides a comprehensive guide to everyday life, but also to religious belief and mandatory ritual.

#7. Considering the details of halacha, the obligations upon each individual – from a moral and common-sense perspective. 

There are too many considerations for a comprehensive analysis. A shorter selection of examples must suffice. 

On the morality of certain precepts and practices, in light of modern western sensibilities.

The role of women. Clearly women are regarded as lesser citizens in the strict canon of the law. They cannot act as witnesses in religious matters. Husbands have the sole right to initiate a divorce, which can create agunot, women trapped against their will in marriages by their husbands. It is true that historically the treatment of women by Jewish law was ahead of its time, but not now. 

The role of non-Jews. Jews are considered to be a special species of humanity, and many practices incorporate this, perhaps the most prominent being the ban against intermarriage. It is based on Jewish birth (or conversion, which is interpreted as the revelation of a hidden “Jewish soul”). As such, there is an unfortunate (but maybe understandable) racial element to it. 

Intrusions into private life – some of it offends morally, some are just a matter of preference. But as commandments that could be enforced if Jewish authorities had the power they are troubling. Some examples, attitudes toward sexual relations – the control of the schedule couples are obliged to follow, the prohibition of masturbation, the uncompromising attitude toward homosexuality (the blind denial that it is a biological fact), essentially condemning gay people to lives of isolation and shame. The prohibition of women singing in public. There are noticeable differences among religious practitioners on some of these, some claiming they are implied by biblical and commentary sources, others considering them as binding customs, and others not accepting them. 

There is much more that can be said, but this is enough to illustrate why many thinking people would struggle to accept the full body of strictures as aspects of the divine revelation of a God that is all-good. 

Matters of common sense. Compulsory rituals from organized prayer to multiple individual blessings to be pronounced for just about everything. For some people, it defies comprehension why an infinitely powerful, knowledgeable, confident God, would require of the humans he created that they continually, repeatedly, affirm his greatness, kindness, and any other possible virtue one can think of; why he would demand magical restrictions on their eating habits, why he would command binding restrictions on their work habits to the point of prescribing stoning and other punishment for their violations. 

#8. The source of morality.

A particularly weak form of argument suggests that, in the absence of this corpus of laws and practices, there would be no moral structure to the social world. If morality is not revealed to us by some superior moral authority, we would be free to make it up. There would be no limits to what we could consider as moral and there could be moral chaos. 

This is an argument that presumes its conclusion. It starts, by implication, with the idea that a moral system is necessary, in other words is moral. One is tempted to ask, what moral system tells you that a moral system is necessary? But, that is only one of its problems. The other, more important, problem is that it is false. It suggests that humans can escape the subjective choice about what is and what is not moral, right and wrong. This choice cannot be escaped. Morality is inescapably, and always, a subjective matter. The “decision” to accept what is claimed to have been revealed is a subjective choice. The religious believer will be repeatedly challenged by any apparent contradiction between what his conscience tells him, and what his religious text tells him is right or wrong. He has to choose. Mostly he chooses to find some compromise that makes it seem as if there is no contradiction. Other times he may choose to accept the religious view and suspend the “ignorant” inclinations of his conscience. But he cannot avoid the choice. 

A modern view is to face up to the fact that all morality ultimately comes from one's conscience (certainly influenced by experience and culture), and act accordingly. 

#9. Other possible approaches to religious teaching -  my own view of the matter. 

Overall, organized religions like Judaism, are the result of millennia of social evolution as humans have striven to deal with their dangerous, uncertain and exciting lives. A child in need of protection and reassurance resides within all of us. So we have invented a perpetual parent, who knows better and helps us make sense of it all. And it works surprisingly well for the majority of humanity. It provides valuable insights through biblical allegories that contain eternal truths about human nature, it embodies great insight in its commentaries, it provides beautiful literature and poetry, grandiose visions, beautiful music. Humanity would be worse off without the sublime teachings of the Jewish tradition on justice, tolerance and love. 

But, equally, it contains unfortunate anachronisms that should be and often are abandoned. And some religions, or versions of religions, like Islamism, should be vigorously combatted. Until modern times, pretty much all major wars were fought in the name of religion. 

Bottom line: religion can be a great source of morality, inspiration, and stability. But it can also be a source of massive intolerance destruction and brutality. The key is this: 

Religion is likely to be a force for good as long as it does not have the power to compel, as long as it remains a lifestyle choice and not a state enforced legal system. Judaism lost it state power with the destruction of the second temple and became a religion without priestly or governmental power. Perhaps that is the secret of its relative tolerance.