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Unnatural ‘Elites’ Are Not Disinterested, nor Are They Experts. Not Even Close…

Is Elitophobia a Hate Crime?

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November 27, 2019

“The reason power corrupts,” said Kyle Rothweiller in an otherwise forgettable essay, “is that sooner or later its possessor comes to believe he deserves it.”

It’s always risky to climb above your station and look down on the swells. Daniel Defoe found that out the hard way. After publishing The Shortest Way with the Dissenters, in 1703, he went to the pillory followed by Newgate prison. He had made fools of the high-church men by suggesting intolerant, violent extremes against religious non-conformists of his day. The holy men publicly agreed. Sharper readers of the era recognized that the tract was a satire lampooning the whole idea. Clerics who got laughed at set their hounds on the anonymous author. Once outed they made sure he paid.

Some 200 years later William Somerset Maugham’s play, “Our Betters”, was stifled by his betters in the British government for nearly a decade. They were worried that well-heeled American damsels would be riled by the way they were portrayed in the comic drama…as rich schemers foraging English gentry for titles. The first war was on at the time. East coast US ports were providing every material thing, along with a line of credit to buy the stuff, Crown forces desired. Hale and hardy Midwestern farm boys for the trenches were next on the shopping list. 10 Downing Street wasn’t about to let the London stage queer the deal.

Maugham was being wryly ironic with his use of the word “betters” in the play. The idea of who is, and isn’t, supposedly “better” than others has been flipped around with rhetorical judo since the time snootiness became human nature. The denizens of American high-society were warming to the mores of British hierarchy at the time of The Great War. Our ruling circles included no shortage of A-listers who knew their way around English drawing rooms. Upon US entry into the conflict, they wasted no time getting as heavy-handed with publicly aired ideas as The Office of the Lord Chamberlain in England. The Committee on Public Information began its war on unwelcome opinion 6 months before the first doughboys landed at Saint-Nazaire.

In May 1917 producer Robert Goldstein’s film “Spirit of ‘76” opened in a Chicago theater. Less than one year later Goldstein was sentenced to ten years in federal prison. The movie was made before the US joined the Allies. It wasn’t a crime then to make redcoats look bad in their fight against Americans. Troops from the sceptered isle were doing a lot of bossing people around on continental soil in the 18th century. That’s what started the Boston Massacre. Brits thought they were better than the “crude colonials”.

Ruling in the aptly named case, United States v. “Spirit of ‘76”, sentencing Judge Benjamin F. Bledsoe said: “Count yourself lucky that you didn’t commit treason in a country lacking America’s right to a trial by jury.  You’d already be dead.” John Bull, invented in the Arbuthnot screed Law is a Bottomless Pit, couldn’t have said it better. Goldstein, who was Jewish, likely suffered from the prejudice against Germanic surnames common at the time. Whatever finally became of him is unknown.

George Will’s November 21 column concerns Joel Stein’s book: “In Defense of Elitism: Why I’m Better Than You and You’re Better than Someone Who Didn’t Buy This Book.” That title might be a lot funnier if there weren’t quite so many colleagues of Will and Stein, who think they are better than dissenters, presently advocating for censorship of one kind or another. Some of them don’t even seem to realize that their published words are doing it.

“Populist,” like “elitist” or “troll,” has a definition that shifts according to the needs of the user. This is one of many reasons the 4th estate can never be a truly qualified professional class like physicians, airline pilots or bricklayers. The art of describing reality cannot be severed from any individual’s place in it. Limiting who is allowed into the realm of offering perspective efficiently limits the realm of perspective. Why else would those anti-elitist Nazis have been so keen on keeping published viewpoints within bounds they defined?

In a specific example defending “elites” Will tells us:

“Granted, expert economists did not anticipate the 2008-2009 financial crisis, but some of them prevented it from becoming Great Depression 2.0. Today’s anti-elitism wields what Stein calls the Meteorologist Fallacy — because forecasts are sometimes wrong, meteorology is worthless…”

He fails to qualify that “some of them prevented it from becoming the Great Depression 2.O”. Instead, relying on a quote from Stein:

“Populists argue that banks can’t be trusted because their mortgage derivatives collapsed in 2008. It’s an argument that is tricky to refute unless you’ve ever dealt with a child. Their first method of challenging adults is to say that you were wrong this one time about that one obscure fact, so you’re probably wrong about humans needing to go to sleep at night.”

So, who are these “Populists” Stein refers to? And what assumptions were these derivatives based upon? Googling “mortgage to income ratio” this citation is at the high end of what’s on the first page of hits:

“Mortgage lenders say that a mortgage payment should not exceed 31percent of an applicant’s gross monthly income. To figure your mortgage front-end ratio, multiply your annual salary by 0.31 and divide it by 12 months. Dec 15, 2018.”

How many people found qualified for mortgages by 2008 failed to meet this criteria? And how were such details figured into the calculations used in formulating the derivatives in question? Is this what Stein is calling an “obscure fact”? If it is the writer has effectively disqualified himself from any discussion of finance. What if Maserati came to Wall Street with a plan to sell one million units in the United States? Would the income of potential buyers be scrutinized? This whole treatment, by both Stein and Will, is dilettantish, superficial and…childish.

In many ways, some of the worst features of 2008 crisis are still in play. Much of the country, anywhere within the range of abundant decent paying jobs, continues to struggle with oppressive rents and mortgages. In Alexandria, Va., where I live, more than one million square feet of commercial real estate has been vacant for a decade in the one mile between the Potomac River and the Masonic Temple on King Street. That’s some of the most coveted space in northern Virginia. Still, lease rates per square foot never abate. Let the “experts” explain that. The ever present presence of street people along that route keep many noses distractedly close to the grindstone.

Meanwhile, the uppermost crust of the banking elite have their mouthpieces advocate for elimination of hard currency several times each year in major publications. They openly declare a right to electronically control every transaction on the planet. In any case, there have been enough relevant banking scandals in recent decades to go on at book length covering. We’ll suffice it here with this small observation: Most banks today charge a fee to cash a check at the very bank it is drawn on. They will shake down the poor and desperate squeezing dollars any way they can.

“Elites are necessarily small groups that exercise disproportionate influence. In any modern, complex democracy, the question is not whether elites shall rule, but which elites shall, so the perennial political problem is to get popular consent to worthy elites.”

The redundancy of the word “elite” in this passage could help clue Mr. Will in to why all those grubby populists are guilty of so much lese majeste. Inside the beltway, you can barely go from one conversation to the next and avoid butting heads with someone who finds himself worthy of bossing Joe Six-pack around. What the lobster-backs did on Boston streets in 1770 was generally mild in comparison to modern “elitist” proposals. The British class system of rule by “elites” arrived here on the same vessel that brought war censorship.

Will’s bizarre satisfaction with the present caste system leaves readers wondering what the man reads. Does he really imagine our foreign service has been achieving diplomatic coups of late? Is North Africa’s present state what we were shooting for? Was the plan for Syria pre-Trump improving prospects there? Was there ever a comprehensive understanding of Turkey’s popular struggles with that country’s notorious deep state? Was George keen on the second Gulf War? How about Viet Nam? A delve into American foreign policy blundering wouldn’t fit in a single book but many volumes. It’s “elites” are indefensible.

Mr. Will has written himself about the confiscatory outrages of asset forfeiture. Is he under the delusion this was accomplished through grassroots efforts? It was law enforcement and political elites that imposed this mass rip-off upon Americans. Has the man heard about the carnage and destruction wreaked by the proliferation of SWAT raids? Once again, it would take more than one tome to do this subject any justice. Does he think there was a referendum that served up the 1033 program? LEO elites with the discretion of Barney Fife, Eric Holder among them, decided that the local sheriff in Podunk needed a tank.

Continue reading…

From LRC, here.

It Is Wrong for the Military to Kidnap ARABS Without a Trial, Too!

Israel holds a US scholar in administrative detention, as colleagues demand his release

 on 

International scholars and activists are campaigning for the release of their colleague and friend, Ubai Aboudi, who was arrested by Israeli forces on November 13th and has since been held under administrative detention.

Aboudi, a US citizen and director of the Ramallah-based Bisan Center for Research and Development, was detained from his home in the town of Kafr Aqab northeast of Jerusalem, where he lives with his wife Hind and their three young children.

Born and raised in Bloomington, Indiana, Aboudi has lived most of his adult life in Ramallah, where he was educated as a political economist at Birzeit University.

His work at the Bisan center, according to family and friends, consists mostly of working with marginalized communities in rural areas of Palestine “to support their struggle in advancing their socio-economic rights.”

“Ubai’s family and friends are distraught and anxious for his immediate release,” a statement written by Aboudi’s family said, adding that “Ubai would like nothing more than to continue his work of bringing education and equal gender rights to his community” and to be home with his family to decorate their Christmas tree.

“It is a violation of international rights to imprison a person without any accusations or indictments,” the statement said, urging “fellow Americans and citizens of the world who believe in the rule of law and Ubai’s rights of due process as a US citizen and human being to demand for his immediate release.”

On November 18th, five days after he was arrested, Aboudi was put before an Israeli military court — which has a 99% conviction rate — and sentenced to 4 months in prison, subject to renewal.

Under Israel’s widely condemned policy of administrative detention, Palestinians can be detained for months, or years at a time, for “security reasons,” without ever being charged with a crime or having their day in court.

Continue reading…

From Mondoweiss, here.

Rabbi Malinowitz: The Rationalist Approach Is KOSHER, and You Need NOT Always Listen to the Gedolim!

A Rav with Strength and Integrity

The news of the passing of Rav Chaim Malinowitz – senior editor of the Schottenstein Talmud (Bavli and Yerushalmi), rav of Beis Tefillah in Ramat Beit Shemesh – came as a great shock. He had been seriously ill for a while, but it was not thought to be life-threatening. But more than that – Rav Malinowitz was a larger-than-life figure, and it seems impossible for him to not be alive.

In the years 2004-2006 in particular, he was one of the most important people in my life. Over the last few years our relationship unfortunately broke off, when he became involved in political campaigning for the Abutbul administration in Beit Shemesh and took stances in various other community issues to which I (and many others) deeply objected. Fortunately, in the last few months we were able to patch things up on a personal level.

My relationship with Rav Malinowitz goes back over twenty years, before he was appointed rabbi of Beis Tefillah in Ramat Beit Shemesh. I was twenty-four years old, single, learning in yeshivah in Jerusalem, and publishing a weekly parashah sheet. In one of those essays, I penned a criticism of a popular icon in the wider Jewish world. A barrage of complaints ensued, and being a sensitive person plagued by self-doubt, I issued a public apology and retraction. Whereupon I received an email from someone who identified himself as one Rabbi Chaim Malinowitz. He wrote that my original article was absolutely correct, that I shouldn’t have buckled under criticism, and that my parashah essays won’t have much value if I just pander to the demands of others.

From his email, it was apparent that he thought I was much more senior than I actually was, so I wrote back to him and explained that I was just a 24 year old yeshivah bochur. Next thing I knew, he showed up at my yeshivah to chat with me. I was a bit puzzled at this special visit, but things became clearer when, a few days later, it turned out that he was proposing a shidduch for me! It was truly an honor, even though that shidduch was not meant to be. And subsequently we kept in touch.

A few years later, I was married and living in Ramat Beit Shemesh, and our shul at the time, Beis Tefillah, was searching for a rabbi. I suggested hiring Rav Malinowitz, as did a few other people. While there are very different views as to whether this appointment turned out to be good for Beit Shemesh (due to his political involvement), it certainly turned out to be incredibly fortuitous for me.

The story of the controversial ban on my books is well known. Perhaps not as well known is the role that Rav Malinowitz played in this story. While there were a number of rabbanim that supported me in various ways, probably none were as significant as Rav Malinowitz.

When the ban happened, which caused my family and I over a year of torment, I still saw myself very much as being a part of the charedi world. While there were rabbanim from the Centrist/Modern Orthodox communities inviting me to be a part of their world, I wasn’t psychologically/socially ready to do that. And I was receiving hundreds of letters of support from people within the charedi world, so I wasn’t ready to portray the controversy as being a charedi vs. non-charedi dispute (I have since mostly changed my mind on that). So it was crucial for me to have rabbinic guidance and support from within the charedi world.

Now, there were rabbis in the charedi world who were supporting me. My own mentor in the topic of Torah and science, Rav Aryeh Carmell, stood by his approbations for my works and issued a further letter of support; but by that point he was too old and weak to be dynamically involved. There were other rabbanim in the charedi world who were giving me moral and strategic support, but they were understandably too afraid to be public about it. (Reminder: don’t judge people until you are in their place.) And they weren’t necessarily people with big-name authority anyway.

But there was Rav Malinowitz! He played a crucial role in so many ways. He was an outstanding Torah scholar with bona fide credentials in the charedi world, and with a prominent position as editor of the Schottenstein Talmud. He made himself available by phone and by email to guide me and support me at every step of the way. He helped me draft letters and develop strategies. He gave me crucial guidance in the topic of rabbinic authority.

Rav Malinowitz had a very sensible, traditional, grounded approach to Chazal and science. He once shared with me an interesting insight – “According to those people who think that Chazal had divinely-inspired knowledge of modern science, why would it be limited to the science of 2005? It would mean that Chazal knew every scientific discovery that will ever take place in the future!”

Interestingly, although Rav Malinowitz had written an approbation to my work, he himself did not agree with all of my approaches to Torah/science topics, with regard to Bereishis. (He had no particular expertise in science, and was deeply skeptical of it.) But this made his support for me all the more potent. When people would tell him that my approach to various topics was wrong, he’d say to them: “I agree with you! But that doesn’t mean that it’s beyond the pale of acceptable opinions!”

Importantly, he maintained that it was completely acceptable for people to dispute my approach. People were entitled to firmly maintain that the Gemara did not contain anything scientifically inaccurate, and that Bereishis is to be interpreted entirely literally. But what they were not entitled to do was to claim that I was not allowed to take a different view and that I was alone in doing so. They were entitled to condemn my approach, as long as they made it clear that they were also condemning Rambam, Rav Hirsch, and so on.

Rav Malinowitz was the one who explained to me exactly why I was not under the slightest obligation to obey the ban. He explained to me both why the rules of rabbinic authority do not require one to always listen to the Gedolim, and why their opposition to my work was mistaken. But it wasn’t just personal guidance that he gave me – there was no shortage of people doing that. Rav Malinowitz was one of only a handful of people in the charedi world who actually went on record as publicly supporting me.  He wrote an official letter, on shul letterhead, explicitly reiterating his support.

The significance of this should not be underestimated. In the charedi world, publicly going against the Gedolim is virtually unthinkable; the strength of character required is immense. It wasn’t just a matter of people badmouthing him (though, for people outside of the charedi world, it’s hard to conceive of just how much pressure this can create). Rav Moshe Shapiro called him in to castigate him for undermining his stance against me – and Rav Malinowitz stood his ground. Rabbi Meir Zlotowitz at ArtScroll – Rav Malinowitz’s primary employer – threatened to fire him if he didn’t repudiate his support for me. At that point, I told Rav Malinowitz that he could sell me out, as I didn’t want him to lose his job. But he told me that on principle he could not do such a thing. (Fortunately, as he predicted, the threat fell through.)

As the controversy over my books stretched out beyond a year, the toll became unbearable. My wife and I went to meet with Rav Malinowitz together to discuss the situation. He said to us: “Why not just leave the charedi community? Switch your kippah, send your kids to different schools, and that’s that! You’ll be much happier.” We took his advice and were immensely better off for it. (Ironically, a few years later, Rav Malinowitz told me that he was upset that I followed his advice so completely as to even leave his shul – he hadn’t meant for me to go that far!)

As I mentioned, several years later, Rav Malinowitz took positions on various communal and political issues that aroused much opposition in the non-charedi religious community, including with me. At one point, our dispute became very public. And yet, consistent with his own approach to rabbinic authority, he had no problem with my publicly disagreeing with him. He continued to email me over the years with various sources of interest. And while I was still upset by the communal positions that he had taken, and his public claims about there being a “War on Torah” in Beit Shemesh, I always told him that my gratitude for what he did for me in my hour of need would never falter.

Will there ever be such a figure in the charedi community again, with such integrity and strength of character? Rav Malinowitz’s passing leaves a great void. May his memory be for a blessing.

From Rationalist Judaism, here.

Exposing the Kiruv Cons in Rabbi Zamir Cohen’s ‘The Coming Revolution’

Is this Torah-true Judaism?

I was looking at Rabbi Zamir Cohen’s book The Coming Revolution today. In it, he claims that Louis Pasteur developed his cure for rabies after first reading a French translation of the Talmud. Cohen writes:

While living in Paris, Rabbi Dr Rabinowitz began translating the Talmud into French When his friend, Louis Pasteur, saw a copy of “Seder Mo’ed” – the tractates dealing primarily with the Jewish holiday cycle – it roused his curiosity. To his amazement he read there the following statement:

“If someone is bitten by a mad dog [affected with rabies], he should be fed the lobe of that dog’s liver.”
The doctor was amazed at this healing method, which used part of the infected animal itself. He concluded that the Sages knew that an infected body produces antibodies, which attack an invading infection. Moreover, it seems that the antibodies, which concentrate in the liver, could actually help heal a person who was bitten by a rabid dog. Doc. Pasteur immediately began a series of experiments that eventually resulted in the saving of millions of human lives.

It really bothers me when people use falsehoods to try and make other people religious. To me, this seems like a complete distortion of both history (and science) and – more importantly – of Torah. Let’s have a look at the facts:

About Rabinowitz, I only know what google tells me. Apparently Dr. Israel Mikhl Rabinowitz was originally from Grodno and eventually came to Paris where he qualified as a doctor. But he gave up medicine to devote himself to translating the Talmud into French (the international language of the time). According to this website

Between 1871 and 1880… he published excerpts of the sequence: זרעים, מועד, נשׁים, נזיקין, קדשׁים, טהרות [six books of Mishna: Seeds, Holidays, Women, Damages, Sanctity, Purification] accompanied by forwards and comments.

It is perhaps conceivable that he knew Louis Pasteur. But Pasteur had begun work on vaccination in the mid 1860s. While his vaccine for rabies was first used only in 1885, the concept of vaccines went back to Jenner’s work in 1796. Furthermore, Pasteur did not use livers to obtain his vaccine, but saliva from rabid dogs. It is possible that the story Cohen tells is true, but to my mind extremely unlikely that reading the Talmud led to his discovery of the vaccine.

Now let us look at the Talmud:

The Mishna (Yoma chapter 8 number 6) tells us that the idea of eating the lobe of the liver of the diseased dog was actually forbidden by the majority of the Rabbis. Only Matia ben Cheresh permitted it. Soncino translates thus (Yoma 82b):

IF ONE WAS BIT BY A MAD DOG, HE MAY NOT GIVE HIM TO EAT THE LOBE OF ITS LIVER, BUT R. MATTHIA B. HERESH PERMITS IT

As Rabbi Dr. Fred Rosner points out, he lived in Rome and was thus acquainted with the wisdom of the ancient physicians such as Dioscorides, Galen, and others. In other words, not only is the ‘cure’ not agreed to by the Rabbis, its source is not actually Jewish, but from the Greeks. In fact, “Vegetius Renatus (3rd century) recommended that cattle bitten by a rabid dog could be protected by making them swallow the boiled liver of the dog.” Perhaps he learnt this from Rav Matia ben Cheresh, but it seems to me equally possible that Rav Matia learnt it from him. It is possible that Matia lived earlier (2nd century) which means that we should credit him with the cure. But I am not convinced that his cure was discovered from his knowledge of Torah, but rather from the medicine that was being discovered in Rome at that time.

If we look at the Talmud (84a) that follows this Mishna, we see that the Rabbis’ ideas of cures were very different from those of modern medicine.

‘One whom it bites, dies’. What is the remedy? — Abaye said: Let him take the skin of a male hyena and write upon it: I, So-and-so, the son of that-and-that woman, write upon the skin of a male Hyena: Hami, kanti, kloros. God, God, Lord of Hosts, Amen, Amen, Selah, Then let him strip off his clothes, and bury then, in a grave [at cross-roads], for twelve months of a year. Then he should take them out and burn them in an oven, and scatter the ashes. During these twelve months, if he drinks water, he shall not drink it but out of a copper tube, lest he see the shadow of the demon and be endangered. Thus the mother of Abba b. Martha, who is Abba b. Minyumi, made for him a tube of gold [for drinking purposes].

According to Zamir Cohen, the Rabbis of the Talmud knew all of modern medicine and should be thanked for inventing vaccines and saving lives. Do you think that even he would go to a doctor who prescribed this kind of treatment? The Rabbis of the Talmud thought that rabies was caused by either witchcraft or an evil spirit:

Where does it come from? — Rab said: Witches are having their fun with it. Samuel said: An evil spirit rests upon it

Is it not dishonest to claim that the Rabbis understood that “infected body produces antibodies, which attack an invading infection.” Would Pasteur really have been impressed by this scientific knowledge?

Why does any of this make a difference? Apart from the fact that I think it is a perversion and distortion of Torah (which bothers me a LOT), it has major implications for halacha. The next sugya in the Talmud there is about the definition of death. Do we check the nose (for respiration) or the heart (from cardiac activity)? If the Rabbis of the Talmud knew all of modern medicine and received their knowledge from the Torah, then there is no possibility that modern medicine knows better than they about things like deep brain stem death. If, on the other hand, the Rabbis were telling us the wisdom of their time, then perhaps we can update Jewish views on medicine to take into account modern medicine and techniques.