Category Archives: Current Events

Seldom do one op-ed article and three letters to the editor unintentionally reveal the malady that is threatening to destroy American Jewry.

In the Wall Street Journal (December 30, 2016), the writer Andrew Klavan criticized physicist Stephen Hawking for the latter’s now common assertion that the universe can be explained without G-d, the Creator. Hawking: “The laws of gravity and quantum theory allow universes to appear spontaneously from nothing.” If science explains everything then G-d becomes unnecessary; of course, science does not explain everything. But they are both wrong in their assumptions. Klavan is wrong because Jews believe the creation did emerge “spontaneously from nothing,” that G-d created the universe “yesh me-ayin,” creation ex nihilo, and doesn’t seem to realize that “the laws of gravity and quantum theory” are merely tools that the Creator, in His will, created, and could have used in creating what He wishes to create. Hawking is wrong because, as Klavan rightly points out, the laws of nature had to originate from something, and to believe the converse (the eternity of the universe and matter) is, well, a belief.

No matter. Klavan’s objective was to re-introduce religion into this discussion by positing the impossibility of explaining creation without a Creator. It was a reaffirmation of his religious faith and a defense of all believers.

On January 5, 2017, Klavan was lambasted in the WSJ by three letter writers for his naïveté, “patent nonsense,” “obvious flaws,” and “obnoxious and erroneous assertions.” All three were diehard seculars, presumed atheists who ridicule the very notion of God’s existence. More on their contentions in a moment.

Here’s the irony: Klavan described himself as being raised a “secular Jew who converted to Christianity,” and is married to a Christian and raising a Christian family. The three letter writers were named Gelb, Fried and Siegal, all obviously Jewish names and all, at least the descendants of Jewish fathers if not mothers as well. Nevertheless, let us assume the three are Jews.

What emerges is that the only person of faith in this whole mix is the Jew who purported to convert to Christianity. The three Jews were the ones who publicly professed their rejection of God and mocked the believer.  That is, sadly, quite typical of American Jewish life today, and why the Jewish world, outside the Orthodox community, is suffering sustained and consistent losses of people, prestige, influence and a real connection to the truths of Torah. As every Jewish life is precious – because every Jew is an integral part of the Jewish nation – such losses are devastating to us all and are a cause for mourning, not celebration. But neither mourning – nor celebration – will save one soul for Torah and the Jewish people.

Beyond the tragic irony is the realization that the heretical arguments of the three Jewish letter writers are hackneyed and unsophisticated, such that they could be answered by an educated Yeshiva high school student. The old question “Who created G-d?” is asked, as if it is a credible challenge to the notion of God as First Cause or a refutation of the concept of cause and effect.

It is a shame that intelligent Jews are unfamiliar with Jewish sources and discussions of these very matters among the greatest Jewish minds in history (like Rav Saadia Gaon, Rambam, Ramban et al), and the lack of Jewish education among Jews who are otherwise educated is the real crisis that has eviscerated American Jewry.

Briefly, for this most engaging topic, G-d is an incorporeal Being who transcends time and space and, indeed, created time and space. Nothing preceded Him or follows Him. That is the definition of “eternal.” He always existed and thus was never created.

Moreover, God created cause and effect, as well as the laws of nature that were fixed and finalized when the process of creation stopped with the onset of the very first Shabbat. So to ask “who created the First Cause” is to indulge a non sequitur. The First Cause needs no creation; that is what makes it “First.”

Only physical entities need to be created. Only physical entities can be “proven”  in a laboratory because a laboratory is equipped to evaluate physical substances based on the laws of nature. Matters that are purely ideational are not subject to “laboratory” proof. This is both obvious – and has a profound practical and moral dimension to it. If G-d’s existence was physically verifiable – as it was, for example, at Sinai – it would impair and undermine the free will of every human being – as it did in the aftermath of Sinai. Free will is the essence of the human personality. Thus, to the person of faith, God’s existence demands study and can be found in creation and His governance of human affairs. To the person of no faith, the fact that a non-physical G-d cannot be demonstrated in a laboratory is supposedly a slam dunk refutation of G-d’s existence. Hardly, and “faith” here does not mean “blind faith” or “irrational faith,” but a faith that is grounded in reason, tradition, and knowledge.

One writer (Siegal) insisted that all he seeks is mutual respect –  that Klavan should respect his right of disbelief as he respects Klavan’s right to believe. But this too is misleading, as nothing that Klavan wrote indicates even remotely a lack of respect for the secular viewpoint. What he wrote is that “secularism” is failing Western civilization because it is inherently incapable of dealing with radical Islam and other moral challenges. It is secularism that cannot recognize the tenacity of true faith (of any kind) and how the material world holds less and sometimes no attraction to some believers. For sure, that secular view has engendered the curious disposition that every problem can be resolved, every war can be negotiated to a peaceful conclusion satisfactory to all sides, and that bitter enemies can reconcile without compromising their cherished beliefs. But none of that is true save for extraordinary circumstances. This secular viewpoint is alive and well among one shrinking segment of Israeli society that refuses to characterize attacks on Jews or Israel as elements of a religious war simply because it is inconvenient to characterize it as such or because they refuse to accept that faith (of any kind) can have that power over human beings. But it does.

To ask secular people to reconsider the value of faith is not to disrespect them but to show concern for them. It is merely to point out to them that they are “accidentalists,” and there are perhaps no greater believers today that those who believe that the universe and everything in it, man and his development, are just cosmic accidents.

All these questions have rational answers, and if only Jews would study them before rejecting Judaism or tilling the vineyards of others we would be a different people. How sad that the Jew of faith had to become a Christian to find that faith, while the three Jews with Jewish surnames revel in their pseudo-sophisticated lack of faith. How sad that after almost two millennia of a bitter exile in which so many Jews tenaciously clung to the Torah that, in recent years,  millions of Jews have used the freedom of America to reject their faith and heritage. That is the tragedy of American Jewry and why our numbers and commitment are in such steep decline. It can only be reversed through love, tolerance, intensive Torah education and recognition of the historic times in which Jews are now living – having returned to Israel, established Jewish sovereignty there after a lapse of two millennia, and on the verge of the Messianic era.

For sure, there are large pockets of great strength, optimism and dynamism in American Jewry and American Jewish religious life.  The thinking Jew should run, not walk, to be part of that people, that process and that destiny.

     The reaction to the Trump victory has been over-the-top, provoking raucous and even violent demonstrations by those whose commitment to democracy tolerates only one legitimate electoral outcome – the one they prefer. They shout epithets at the man whom they despise because he used epithets, and act violently to protest the man they fear will bring violence to American streets. They are trying to destroy America to thwart the man they believe will destroy America. One wonders how they have so much time off from work, until the realization dawns that violent protest is their paid profession.

Certainly there are more restrained opponents of the president-in-waiting, who fear the consequences of aspects of his character and his unformed policy prescriptions. That, indeed, is true of every opponent of every new president. But those ideological opponents are not taking to the streets, not denouncing Trump at every turn, and not demanding – demanding! – that the rest of society join them in their disgust, issue proclamations against him, and oppose all his policies and appointments. They will not be satisfied until Trump adopts their view of every issue and nominates for his cabinet people they approve. Of course that will not happen. The unrestrained antagonists can be ignored, save for the violence, but the Jews among them who think calling someone racist, bigot, sexist, etc. has any potency anymore should take a look in the mirror.

The Baal Shem Tov said that righteous people who have no evil within them do not see evil in others. For everyone else, the evil we see in others is essentially what we do not want to see in ourselves. It is as if when we are looking at others, especially critically, we are standing in front of a mirror really looking at ourselves. What bothers us about others should really bother us about ourselves and induce us to change, learn, grow, and improve. And at first, it is worthwhile to recognize what is right before our eyes.

President-elect Trump has elicited strong, even hysterical reactions, for both his real and imagined flaws. One would think that with the elections over it would be prudent for even his opponents to reconcile with the new reality. That so many cannot is a comment more on them than on him. Those who take to the streets to scream, yell, wave signs, break windows, shout vulgarities and cause mayhem are worse than immature; they have become a caricature of everything they are protesting. They may be looking at Trump but they are seeing the worst in themselves.

It is hard to deny that over the last few decades America has become a decadent, even vulgar, society. The lewd and the crude are standard entertainment offerings, with many critics even deprecating family entertainment (notwithstanding that it usually produces higher revenue) as saccharine and old-fashioned. Trump has been rightly criticized for his occasional vulgar speech, although certainly that should not define his personality any more than any other single attribute defines a person. He does push the ends of the envelope when he is not altogether shredding the envelope. But he is actually quite representative of the society that he will soon lead. The crude language that he uses on occasion is quite typical of American culture. It is ironic that many protesting his crudity revel in it when the practitioners are rap singers, entertainers, and cable television offerings. Their words are the same as his words, except that his are used more sparingly and often whimsically.

Whatever offensive things he has said are actually tame compared to the lyrics of rap, the ranting of bad comedians, and what the tawdry culture celebrates. We should remember that New Yorkers first got to know Donald Trump as a real estate developer, but much of the rest of the country became familiar with him as an entertainer. This is the culture. What so many of his critics loathe in Trump is, perhaps, what they should loathe about American society but they don’t. They are just looking in the mirror and don’t like what they see.

On the flip side, Hillary Clinton represented another coarse aspect of modern life that many of her supporters generally and studiously ignored: the high-flying and sweet rhetoric offered the public contrasted with the crass materialism, insider deals, rank dishonesty and insatiable greed that was the private Clinton world. That she traded access for money, lots of it, is undeniable. Sadly, the American culture has long rewarded the something-for-nothing mentality, from the top of society to the bottom. She was an especially heavy-handed and oleaginous practitioner of it, but also is not atypical of the society. Consider that Harry Truman – also a vulgarian by the way but one of the most honest men ever to serve as president – said that the only way one can make money in politics is by being a crook. We should look in the mirror and ask ourselves why that was tolerable to so many.

Add to that one other lamentable aspect of the culture: the incessant assertions that Clinton was entitled to the presidency because she was a woman and it was “about time.” Nothing has made American life more vacuous than the identity politics played by the Democrats. Who you are and what you are is not as important as to which group you belong, as if choosing a president is all about checking off the right boxes on the diversity application. Such an approach is demeaning to the individual’s status as a unique creature of G-d, but it nonetheless prevails in much of the mass media and the general society. Unfortunately, that will get worse before it gets better, and it cannot get better until each person looks in the mirror and sees a human being and not part of a class.

Finally, the shrillness of Trump’s critics has become especially strident with the demands – demands! – that Trump apologize for this uttered word or not appoint that guy, that rabbis denounce this speech or that act, that everyone kowtow to the social media mob. It is actually amusing that some of the people who did not vote for Trump are now demanding – demanding! – that he fire this guy, change this policy, or else. Or else… what?

I don’t know Steve Bannon from Steve Madden (although I am partial to anyone named Steven) but the customary accusations from the left have descended on him full force (big league, as the president-elect would say). The vehemence of the accusations against him that he is a Jew-hater are in inverse proportion to the evidence of that charge, which evidence is actually quite skimpy and disreputable. Why Trump should heed his opponents and dismiss a loyal aide is a mystery, mitigated only by the realization that he will justifiably ignore them. The louder they get, the less people hear them.

What is no mystery, and quite-off-putting, is the frequency at which charges of “anti-Semitism” (as people inexplicably call Jew-hatred) are leveled against anyone with whom many liberal Jews disagree or who make an off-handed crack. It is the stock in trade of organizations such as the ADL, long just an irritant – an expensive irritant, at that – without any power or influence in the Jewish or non-Jewish world. Its only weapon is that accusation, and so it lies in wait and sits in judgment of every utterance made by anyone. (I have been attacked several times by the ADL over the years – I frankly don’t remember for what – as has Jerry Seinfeld, among numerous others.)

Granted that this is what they do for a living, but when Jewish organizations cheapen the use of this slur by sheer frequency and inappropriate use, it is like the boy who cried wolf. When it really happens – and real Jew hatred occurs, such as in the Crown Heights riots 25 years ago when the ADL was out-to-lunch, no one will pay attention. Would that the ADL was more exercised by the nomination of Keith Ellison as head of the Democratic National Committee! Now there’s a guy with some rough things to say about Jews and Israel, but criticizing a Democrat hits too close to home. They would be better off taking on “Black Lives Matter,” elements of which are permeated with Jew hatred.

In a most bizarre twist, an array of “Jewish” organizations is calling on Trump to denounce “anti-Semitism” (again) and announce his support for a Palestinian state. In other words, eviscerating the State of Israel is now a sign of philo-Semitism? Jews who love Jews are supposed to favor expelling Jews and renouncing Israeli sovereignty over the biblical heartland of Israel? We do live in strange times. Perhaps it is worth mentioning a cartoon that has made the rounds in the last week, with the caption: “The difference between Donald Trump and most leftist American Jews is that Trump has Jewish grandchildren.” If only these groups would realize that intermarriage is the most serious crisis facing them today, and compared to that, politics is beanbag.

As it is, few outside the leftist media echo chamber pay attention even today to their “demands.” Fortunately, the Social Justice Warriors who have arrogated to themselves the right to adjudicate everyone’s morality (except their own), speech, conduct and ideas are now, post-Trump victory, on the decline. They can yell and scream “racist!” “bigot!” “sexist!” and they will, and they will demand apologies, retractions, clarifications and penance from their targets in order to stay relevant, and the cowardly will accommodate them, but their moment has passed. They will be ignored because they should be ignored. They have committed the grave, modern offense of becoming boring, predictable, and tiresome. The tyranny of those who monitor every word or phrase for swift offense, and keep a dossier on the offenders, is over. Long live freedom!

They too should look in the mirror. Those who attack others for “intolerance” and insist on verbal reparations are among the most intolerant and bigoted people walking the earth today. If only they had the self-awareness to look at their targets and see the hatred in their own hearts for anyone with whom they disagree. They should follow the Baal Shem Tov and realize they are looking in the mirror.

Even this confirmed Mitnaged would welcome that type of neo-Hasidism.