Author Archives: Rabbi

       In this festive season, most Jews were no doubt heartened by the news, reported in the Jerusalem Post (http://www.jpost.com/JewishWorld/JewishNews/Article.aspx?id=200841), that Judaism has been voted the “most popular religion” in America today. These were the findings of a survey conducted for a new book by Harvard’s Robert Putnam (and David Campbell), entitled “American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us.” More than 3,000 respondents of all faiths voted Judaism the most popular, with Catholicism trailing slightly. We win !

    Now, what exactly have we won ? And to what can we attribute our new-found popularity ?

    Putnam ascribes our victory to both the dearth of Jew-hatred today and especially to its increasing unacceptability in public discourse and even private expression. Even mild cracks about Jews tend to evoke vitriolic reactions (Rick Sanchez, don’t call your office), and the Holocaust itself made Jew-hatred itself plain evil, and indicative of both an inferior intellect and substandard morality. Of course, the disappearance of official Jew-hatred in America, and the discrediting of even private Jew-hatred, has not stopped Jews from pumping hundreds of millions of dollars annually to combat ghosts and their equally elusive offspring. Every drop of paint sprayed in anti-Jewish graffiti and every nasty comment hollered at a Jew by some cretin is meticulously catalogued. Hundreds of Jews spend their working careers ruminating over the frightful possibility that somewhere across the fruited plain there might be a non-Jew or two who detests Jews, and blames us for everything from the collapse of Wall Street to the Yankees’ failure to sign Cliff Lee.

     I have long held that that money is terribly wasted. It would be better spent educating Jews about why it is important and worthwhile to live Jews lives, do mitzvot and study Torah than terrifying Jews about why some people hate us and attempting to uproot irrational and hidden resentments. There has to be more to Jewish life than mere survival, which begs the question: for what reason do we survive ? We survive for better reasons than to show Hitler that he couldn’t murder us all. Would it not be better if we focused on Jewish life rather than on Jewish death ? And I refuse to hold non-Jews to higher standards than I hold Jews; not every Jew likes every other Jew, so how can I criticize non-Jews who don’t like every Jew ?

     That being said, I think Putnam misses the point of his own survey, strange as that sounds. The question asked was not “which religious group is most popular?” but “which religion is most popular?” To suggest that Judaism is popular because Jews are liked better today than in the past is to misconstrue the survey and its results. Anyone Jewish knows that we should never confuse or conflate Jews and Judaism; not everything Judaism advocates is embraced by Jews, and not everything Jews do is reflective of Judaism. Jerry Seinfeld might be well-liked (and, of course, he should be) and that could contribute to the general acceptance of Jews in society. But that is not the same as saying that his popularity reflects a greater interest and appreciation of what Judaism stands for, insofar as he perceives himself as part of the Jewish people but not necessarily as a public representative of the Jewish religion.

     Jews are more popular today in America, but so is every ethnic group. Americans – being a nation of immigrants and unprecedented diversity – have a hard time sustaining an aversion to any group. I can understand why Muslims today would be unpopular, but most Americans overwhelmingly reject the notion of group stereotype and will readily dislike Muslim terrorists or radicals but not Muslims generally. Hence the paucity of random attacks on American Muslims despite the fact that the recent terrorist attacks in America have all stemmed from members of that one group. Said another way (for those who defend Muslim terror by pointing to the Unabomber and Timothy McVeigh), no other American terrorist was a member of a defined group with an ideology that preached murder and mayhem. Other terrorists were individuals acting more or less alone, and usually with a loose screw or two. Muslim terrorists emerge from a world view particular to a defined group – and even so, Americans recoil at the notion of blaming all Muslims for the acts of some of them.

     At various points in American history, Jews, Catholics, blacks, Italians, Irishmen, Hispanics, Asians and others were not treated equally or fairly. But it is hard to deny that society has moved far beyond those days, and discrimination today is both legally and culturally scorned, notwithstanding that some of those groups still have huge infrastructures to combat such discrimination. Sometimes, good news is hard to accept. For another example of this trend, look at society’s treatment of homosexuals. I think it was Dennis Prager who noted how quickly homosexuality has traversed the road from condemnation to toleration and now adoration. Americans are not particularly good haters (witness how quickly Germans and Japanese were forgiven for the aggressions of World War II), itself a consequence of the religious sensibilities of this society. “Don’t tread on me” naturally begets “live and let live.”

    So what would make Judaism “the most popular religion” ? On one level, I would hope it is the recognition that the major religions of the world all emerged from Judaism, and then diverged onto different paths. The founders of both Christianity and Islam all looked to the Jews’ Bible for inspiration and their provenance, and indeed resented the Jews’ loyalty to the Torah after those founders deviated from the Judaic message and were largely unsuccessful in co-opting the Jews to their new religions. In an America built on tolerance for various faiths and belief systems, the Jewish idea at the heart of Western civilization has been able to take root in America in an unthreatening and nurturing way. People see Judaism for what it is supposed to be: the framework of morality for man as transmitted to us by our Creator for the benefit of all mankind, with one message uniquely for Jews and a parallel message for non-Jews.

    From a philosophical perspective, Judaism’s moral contributions have found fertile soil in America. The ideas that all men are created equal and in the image of G-d, of loving your neighbor as yourself, of an objective morality that transcends time and place but is uniquely suited to fostering man’s happiness, are all Jewish ideas, conceived in the Torah and explicated in the Talmud. The more parochial aspects of Judaism are designed to ensure that a core group always remains the repository of these ideas – but the principles themselves are ones that appeal and apply to all decent human beings, and are quite at home as part of the American ethos.

    It is a sign of the maturation of the Jewish community and the acceptance of some form of the Jewish idea in America that any survey would yield such results. Frankly, I doubt that many of the Jews who participated in the survey would have voted Judaism the “most popular religion” in America and many of the same might not have even voted Judaism the most popular religion in their own homes. It is a relief that if, indeed, Judaism is popular and not just Jews, then we are no longer perceived as a people of comedians, entertainers and singers (with the occasional athlete thrown in), or doctors, lawyers, scientists and financiers, or as survivors of genocide – but as a people who bequeathed to the world the very secret to a happy, fulfilling, moral and G-d-centered life.

   If that is why Judaism has become so popular in America, then we should be ever vigilant to strengthen the Torah and the people who cherish it, to study it, observe its laws, and preserve it from distortion and “modernization,” to attain and maintain the high standards it sets for us, and lead the world to an era of universal acknowledgement of the dignity of man and the kingdom of G-d. Now, let’s briefly celebrate, and get back to work.

     How does a President whose political fortunes were considered moribund after the mid-term elections – only seven weeks ago – pull off a string of legislative triumphs in record time ? One reason is that he remains a formidable politician who will not be as easy to defeat in 2012 as many assume. A second reason is that these victories are smaller than the sum of their parts.

    Consider the “law” that now permits avowed homosexuals from serving in the military, a move that most combat troops overwhelmingly opposed. It is not difficult to see a harmful effect on unit cohesion when a sexual dynamic is introduced into the ranks, especially where men are forced to live in close quarters for long periods of time. After all, if libido and propriety are not legitimate considerations, men and women in the military would be sharing lodgings, so how can social discomfort not impair military effectiveness ? And for those who have been touting that Israel has had open homosexuals serving in the military for several decades without any loss of effectiveness, well, how do you know ? How do you measure effectiveness ? Israel has not fought a conventional, contested war in almost forty years, and the most recent example of a near-contested conflict – the war in Lebanon in 2006 – was a military debacle. So who’s to say that the IDF has not been harmed by a number of factors, including this one ? What metric is used ? And so the military has been given the needed “flexibility” to

    In any event, the “law” that banned homosexual service was of fairly recent vintage – 1993, in fact, and President Clinton’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” was a (reasonable, workable) reaction to that law. But why was a “law” necessary in the first instance, when the prohibition itself was a military regulation not subject to Congressional oversight ? For example, when President Truman de-segregated the military in July 1948, he did it through Executive Order as was his prerogative as Commander-in-Chief. He did not need Congressional legislation. It was the fear of Clinton’s using the same mechanism (and a deep distrust of Clinton on military issues) that induced Congress to act, what was likely then an inappropriate micromanagement of military matters.

      Of course, Clinton had a good ten months when he could have assured full participation of homosexuals in the military but chose to do nothing.  He wisely chose to do nothing, because the military was opposed then, as it is now. But now that the “PR” victory has been won, the dance goes on. Using the military to advance a social agenda without due regard for its effect on its efficiency is always unwise, so the military has been offered the bone of determining the pace of implementation. What works in liberal theory – think “closing Guantanamo” – might not be as practicable in the real world. In any event, I would be curious to find out whether the new law sparks of wave of homosexuals joining the military. And, more importantly, more than 99% of Americans are unaffected by this legislation, which makes it mostly symbolic and reflective of declining mores.

    The START Treaty is another example of legislation that offers more symbols than substance. Billed as the President’s “leading foreign policy objective” begs the question: why this treaty was ignored for months and then rushed for approval ? And another question: isn’t it just a little quaint to perceive Russia as a “superpower” with whom the United States has to engage in arms control talks ? Russia is a third-rate power with a mono-dimensional economy propped up by oil and natural gas sales, and little else. By many accounts, China has supplanted Russia as America’s main rival, and other countries in the world – Iran, for one – pose a greater threat to America than does Russia. So the nostalgia for a Cold War dynamic is misplaced, and the main effect of the treaty is to limit the US ability to defend itself and its allies by quantifying the number of strategic warheads America can deploy. This effectively dooms the missile shield over Europe that Obama renounced anyway last year, as well as deprives the US of the full capacity to deter the troublemakers in South America, like Venezuela, which is importing Iranian missiles. And all designed to hasten the objective of eliminating all nuclear weapons from the world, a pipedream that is a nightmare for freedom. Remember the old slogan: “If guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns”? The greater horror is the naïve fantasy that the US can divest itself of nuclear weapons, and the evildoers of the world will follow suit.

     And I thought “peace in the Middle East” was the President’s “leading foreign policy objective.” Oh, well. This, too, will not affect the average American.

      The third accomplishment – the extension of the Bush era tax rates – shows Obama’s political prowess. Certainly, I supported the extension and reiterate that any American who wishes to pay taxes at a higher rate can certainly do so, and I support as well a drastic reduction in domestic  and foreign spending (by the way: the time has come. Let Iraq start contributing financially for the presence of American troops there). You can’t (shouldn’t) spend what you don’t have. The apoplexy of the liberal base – which truly believes that not confiscating someone’s wealth is a “tax break” – was a joy to behold. Their assumption must be that everything one earns belongs firstly to the government, which then allows you to keep whatever they deem appropriate. That assumption is Stalinist, not Jeffersonian.

     What’s troubling is the recourse to the lame duck session of Congress in order to deliberate and vote on matters that might have political consequences if done before elections, and debated by many politicians who were repudiated by their constituents and have lost their mandate. These sessions were historically very rare and very limited in scope, but have become almost routine. It amounts to bi-partisan fecklessness, unworthy of people who purport to be national leaders. Indeed, the long delays between elections and the assumption of office are anachronisms that should be changed, immediately. Give new presidents and Congresses two weeks to take office (to allow for ballot challenges and recounts); count absentee ballots before the elections; tally them as they come in, under rules of strict secrecy, of course.

    The most important consequence of all this legislation is on President Obama. The repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” was candy for the liberals dismayed by his acceptance of the Bush-era tax rates, and certainly solidified that part of his base. Like his policies or not (I despise them), he has an admirable record of at least trying to implement, and in many cases, implementing, his campaign promises. The irony is that many of his voters assumed that his promises were just rhetoric – that no leader would be so brazen as to legislate the country into bankruptcy or socialism. But he has tried – and has transformed for the moment his political standing. In a little over one month, Obama went from projecting the appearance of incompetence to projecting the appearance of competence. It is not that any individual piece of legislation is that significant – it’s not – but he momentarily changed the debate, and the image of his presidency, and seized the initiative.

   All of which will make him much more difficult to defeat in 2012. But it is still early. And dealing with a Republican House has the potential to bring out Obama’s arrogance and condescension in a way that alienates many prior supporters. And if a Republican alternative to Obama governance emerges – both person and policy – the campaign will be joined and the battle begun.

     Americans are being threatened with an imminent shutdown of the federal government, as funding for government operations runs out in a scant 48 hours. It is unknown who exactly is doing the threatening but those people need to be reminded not to threaten something that to many others does not sound that frightening at all.

     What exactly happens if the federal government shuts down ? Clearly, essential personnel (military, FBI, earmark coordinator) will remain at work even without pay, anticipating that their compensation will surely come eventually. Non-essential personnel will…well, if they are non-essential, one wonders why they are on the payroll to being with. Can anyone seriously suggest that the average American will notice if EPA shuts down for a few weeks, or the Departments of Commerce, Energy and Education forever ? On the contrary, closing down Congress indefinitely might be the simplest way to reduce the deficit; you can’t spend if the spenders are locked out. The TSA staff, voyeurs and fondlers with government imprimatur – will have to get their jollies elsewhere. Israel can rest securely knowing that the State Department is not hatching new schemes for its dismemberment. And I believe that Americans can be trusted to behave properly in national parks and museums, even without supervisory personnel. The federal government does much today that it is not constitutionally authorized to do, at least as the Founding Fathers envisioned this government of limited and specifically enumerated powers, and much that its overtaxed and overburdened citizens can easily live without. One who threatens a government “closure” might be playing into the hands of the Tea Party; it just doesn’t sound so bad.

     Of course, it likely won’t happen, sad to say, because most of the “government” today consists of union employees who want to be paid (i.e., overpaid) for their jobs. These bureaucrats – by the hundreds of thousands – earn almost twice as much as their peers do in the private sector, and have no reasonable metric by which to measure their productivity or necessity. The government can’t shut down, because too many other citizens will learn how bloated and superfluous are most government functionaries, and how ten such workers can easily be replaced by one or two. It is worthwhile to recall President Reagan’s threat (soon, carried out) to fire and replace striking air traffic controllers, and the predictions of gloom and doom in the skies if that ever came to pass. It did come to pass, and they were supplanted by others quite handily. The skies above remained serene. A government shutdown ? We should try it. If we don’t like it, we can always beg them to come back. In any event, people’s daily lives are more affected by local and state government decisions than by what the federal government does.

     We might not miss them as much as they think we will. The sorry spectacle unfolding before Congress these days – trying to ram through unread, expensive and potentially dangerous bills before a holiday deadline – smacks of college students suddenly awakening from a binge and realizing that finals are just days away. START treaty, assuming it is serious ? Where has this been hidden for months that it must be voted on in a day or two without debate, because of its importance ? Tax policy, the budget – what are these people being paid for if not to raise revenue and appropriate money for the common good in an equitable and intelligent way ? And this too – a $1.1 trillion dollar omnibus spending bill – has to be force-fed to an angry public that has tired of Congressional shenanigans ?

     Nothing irks the American public today more than “earmarks” – the grant of federal dollars to projects favored by particular congressmen. Even though it is not a lot of money in relative terms – this time, $6 billion out of more than $1 trillion – the practice smacks of both abuse and corruption. Some Congressmen are quick to say that people hate all earmarks, except those from which they benefit, and that is partly true. Too many people today dine at the federal trough and want to keep the money flowing to them. But there is a broader objection to this practice, and a relatively simple formula that can be applied to distinguish what is wasteful from what is warranted.

     We have traveled light years from when James Madison (after all, Father of the Constitution) stated in 1794 on the floor of the House, in response to a Congressional appropriation of $15,000 for relief of French refugees who fled from insurrection in San Domingo to Baltimore and Philadelphia, “I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents…T]he government of the United States is a definite government, confined to specified objects. It is not like the state governments, whose powers are more general. Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government.” These days, anything and everything is fair game for the Congressional handout, and Congressmen who distribute money as if it were theirs to give, and to people who presume that it is theirs to take.

    Here’s the formula, so simple one wonders why it has never been embraced: Congress should appropriate funds for things that have some federal interest, and nothing for things that do not.

Interstate highways and bridges have a federal nexus; the re-paving of Kinderkamack Road (the main road running through River Edge, Emerson and Westwood, New Jersey, and proud beneficiary of “stimulus” funds) does not. The latter is a state obligation; let the states sell bonds to pay for road repair.  Museums and statues, foundations in memory of Bart Stupak’s son and John Murtha himself, have no discernible federal interest (those are local and personal matters, respectively), and nor does most of the idiosyncratic research funded by the federal government that serves as subsidies to universities.

    Some projects fall into gray areas. A port in South Carolina ? That could have some federal interest, but it depends on necessity, availability of other options, and other factors. The next generation of GE aircraft engines ? I can see why that is a federal interest, and the fact that money is targeted to a specific state should be no impediment if there is a federal need served by the project. Those are the items that should be debated: which projects have value to the nation as a whole and which projects have limited or parochial interest. The former should be paid for by the feds, the latter by state funds or private donations. That NPR still receives a nickel from our tax dollars is a macabre joke.

     And it should not be government’s responsibility to find or create employment but rather to create economic conditions – through its tax and monetary policy – that encourage employment and growth in the private sector. Certainly, government has the capacity to guarantee full employment. I think it was the great economist Milton Friedman who said that if you really want full employment, government can hire half the people to dig holes and the other half to fill those holes, and voila (!), full employment. Indeed, but no productivity. Yet, too often, government employment programs seem to partake of just that paradigm.

      Americans object to higher taxes – and taxes as they are – because they do not see a positive return on their “investment.” Indispensable federal projects – primarily defense and security – can easily be funded from existing revenues. Most other expenditures historically, were never a federal responsibility, and are still not spent efficiently. The government’s War on Poverty ($3 trillion worth) has been a colossal failure, guaranteeing multi-generational poverty and dependency.  The big-ticket, budget-busting items, now deeply engrained in the American way of life – such as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and now also pension payments to federal employees – are arguably unconstitutional encroachments of government into the lives of its citizens (FDR admitted as much about Social Security, which he foresaw in 1935 would eventually be a gigantic Ponzi scheme). They are nothing less than the re-distribution of wealth – forcibly taking money from some and giving it to others, without cause or justification – itself a form of slavery.   “To take from one, because it is thought his own industry and that of his fathers has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers, have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association, the guarantee to everyone the free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it” (Thomas Jefferson, letter to Joseph Milligan, April 6, 1816). The “death tax” is just a particularly gruesome example: people whose income was already taxed are taxed a second time on those same assets when they shed their mortal coil and seek to bequeath their estates to their heirs.

     To which can be added Benjamin Franklin’s bon mot, an apt description of politics today: “When the people find that they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic.” The frustration level and the distrust of Americans for their government are intensifying daily because those “entitlements” cannot be repealed and are here to stay. But the average American would do better financially setting aside that money for his own retirement, as it becomes increasingly unlikely that 20-30 years from now funds will be sufficient to pay beneficiaries, or that dollar will have a value commensurate with what the payers into the system intended.

     For some, taxes are never high enough. There is always more to spend, more re-distribution to execute and more equitability to engender. To them – all liberal Democrats – I offer the following challenge: pay it ! I have never understood why those who clamor for higher taxes don’t just pay it themselves. There is no law preventing anyone from giving gifts to the Treasury. Those who are apoplectic because the tax rates on high earners might remain at 36% and not be raised to 39.6% are certainly welcome to pay 39.6%. They might even want to splurge and pay 40%, or even 70% (the highest tax bracket when Ronald Reagan became President) of their income. They will be blessed for doing so, and feel altruistic and superior to boot. Whatever usefulness they perceive in paying higher taxes can be freely obtained if they just pay it without being ordered to do so.

     They can, and they should. I’d rather not, at least until I can be reasonably assured that my hard-earned money is being spent sensibly and meaningfully. Until then, a government shutdown might be the only vehicle to “form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, … promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.”

 I trust that rings a bell.