Tish'a B'Av

 

    Tomorrow we will have plenty to mourn; the failings that led to the Hurban nearly 2000 years ago are still with us, impeding the completion of the geula. 

 

   First, more of the financial skullduggery for which “frum” Jews (God, save us from such frumkeit) have become (in)famous.  One Rabbi Ya’akov Weingarten, who lives in my neighborhood of Midwood, allegedly set up charities with solicitation material made to resemble that of real charities that collect for Magen David Adom, Zaka and similar outfits.  But this operator allegedly converted most of the money to his personal use.  The Attorney General of New York brought civil charges; criminal ones might follow.  So now we have to be extra judicious about where our tzedaka dollars go.  I have long ago stopped opening my door to the ubiquitous door-to-door schnorrers that plague my neighborhood; for all I know they could be armed robbers wearing kapotas; stranger things have happened.  Now when I get letters purportedly from well-known charities I will have to make sure of the address, or locate the websites of the legitimate charities and donate online.  Another tactic is to look the charity up on Charity Navigator; a four-star rating means that the charity is well-run (fund raising costs and overhead under control) and everything is on the up-and-up – what we used to take for granted if a charity was run by observant Jews.  Unfortunately, Charity Navigator does not rate all faith-based charities, both because its own resources are limited and because the charities might not be required to file the usual forms with the federal government.  It would also be useful if New York State would require all charities operating in the state to post their financial statements on a website maintained by the Attorney General’s office, instead of our having to request these statements by snail mail.  But that will require fixing Albany, which probably won’t happen in our lifetimes.

 

   Last week another sex abuse scandal surfaced, this time at Modern Orthodoxy’s premier institution Yeshiva University, specifically the boys’ high school that it runs.  The case will be difficult to pursue, since the statute of limitations expired long ago and the plaintiffs (allegedly abused students, now in middle age) have the burden of proof.  If the case ever reaches a jury, it will need more than “he-said-she-said” to find for the plaintiffs.  I wish I could say that Orthodox institutions should be above such sordidness, but the yetzer hara is universal.  More upsetting is the now-familiar cover-up; instead of taking measures to protect its students, Yeshiva University circled the wagons to protect its finances.  The cover-up goes all the way to Rabbi Dr. Norman Lamm, the chancellor who recently retired.  And there’s a deeper problem.  The victims were not little kids, as in the case of Yehuda Kolko and other well-publicized pedophiles, but high school students well past puberty.  The problem thus is not pedophilia (operationally defined as a sexual attraction to pre-pubescent children) but homosexuality.  Would these students not have been victimized if their abusers had been able to be openly gay, have relationships with gay adults and remain in our community?  That could be the subject not only of another post but of a whole book.

 

   And in Israel, the haredim (aka khnyocks) are up to their old tricks.  Now their target is Women of the Wall, a group of women who go to the kotel every Rosh Hodesh and daven, wearing tallitot and tefilin and reading from a Sefer Torah.  Their actions appear to be within halakha, since none other than Bruriah, wife of the Tanna Rabbi Meir, and perhaps Rashi’s daughters, wore tefilin.  Several contemporary halakhic authorities permit women to read from a Sefer Torah in women-only prayer groups, e.g. Women of the Wall.  Nevertheless, it is difficult to defend these women; they seem less interested in enhancing their spirituality than in calling attention to themselves and scandalizing others praying at the kotel. If their intention is to scandalize and offend, the haredim consistently take the bait.  Hooligans, male and female, throw objects at them, spit at them and shout epithets such as “Nazi” and “Reform Jew,” as if the latter was a curse.  Calling our political opponents Nazis is an insult to Holocaust survivors and to the memory of six million dead, who were not all religiously observant despite what some haredi propaganda would have us believe.  And “Reform Jew?”  My thesis adviser a”h was a Reform Jew, a serious and committed one.  I could have trusted him with uncounted money.  I wish I could say the same about some so-called frum Jews (see above) who stoop to every low-down trick in the book as long as it gets them cash.  These rascals possess the outer trappings of frumkeit but if one is not frum inside then the outer trappings are not worth a dime.  They confirm all the negative stereotypes about Jews and money, echo the Jews against whom Isaiah inveighs in the haftara for Shabbat Hazon, and make me ashamed to call myself an Orthodox Jew.

 

   So we have plenty to work on in the coming year.  When people can point to an observant Jew and say, “That is how I want to live,” we will be a lot closer to Tisha B’Av being transformed into a Yom Tov in the rebuilt Beit Hamikdash.

 

 

Not in Our Name - Gay Bashing and Orthodox Rabbis

These last several weeks have seen a spate of suicides of gay teenagers who gave in to despair after being harassed and bullied at school and on the streets. There have also been several violent attacks on actual or perceived gay people. Against this backdrop Brooklyn's very own homophobic rabbi Yehuda Levin joined with Carl Palladino, the Republican candidate for governor of New York, in gratuitously spewing anti-gay hate on television.

It's easy enough to say this is somebody else's problem and look the other way, but in light of our own history and authentic Judaism's view of the world I for one cannot do so. We ought to know that when the human rights of one group are diminished, we are not far behind. And we ought to be outraged by the violence being perpetrated against actual or perceived gay men, because we Jews, Orthodox Jews in particular, were victims of the same kind of violence in the not so distant past. To venture out of doors with a kippa [skullcap] on one's head was to become a walking target for rowdy young Gentiles with nothing better to do than pick fights on the street with Jewish boys. For both gays and observant Jews, the violence and bullying stemmed from the same stereotype - that we were patsies, weaklings unable or unwilling to defend ourselves. And even if this common bond did not exist, our Torah teaches that all human beings carry the image of God and are entitled to respect and dignity. That should be axiomatic, but it seems to have escaped some prominent Rabbinic figures. Steven Greenberg, the first and so far only openly gay Orthodox rabbi wrote an article for the Jewish Week describing his experiences on moving to a new city and entering an Orthodox synagogue there. The rabbi of the shul asked him to leave, and told him that the ruling had come from a rabbi whose authority exceeded his own. I don't get it. No ruling could be issued unless someone asked for one, and that someone presumably was the synagogue rabbi. And in the absence of a recognized Sanhedrin, there is no rabbi whose authority exceeds that of the mara d'atra, the synagogue rabbi, in the confines of that synagogue. It sounds like that synagogue rabbi is a wimp, but it gets worse. Rabbi Greenberg spoke on the telephone with the rabbi who gave the order barring him from the synagogue. It turns out that this man is a prominent Rosh Yeshiva. Rabbi Greenberg told him that he, Rabbi Greenberg, was attempting to find a way for young gay and lesbian Jews to remain part of the Orthodox community, and that some of them become so desperate that they attempt suicide. The rabbi responded that perhaps it is a mitzva for them to do so; that since they are guilty of a capital offense they might as well administer their own punishment. Huh? Suicide is now a mitzva for people who commit capital offenses? Never mind that homosexuality is not a capital offense, only anal sex is, and many of these conflicted young people have not had anal sex. I never heard of any rabbi, let alone a so-called gadol, saying the same for people who violate Shabbat, curse or strike their parents, or commit any other capital offense. Only a qualified Sanhedrin may carry out the Torah's death sentences, and in the 2000-year absence of a "court of competent jurisdiction" these sentences are left to God. Rabbi Greenberg writes how he experienced extreme difficulty keeping his composure. I feel his pain; similarly situated, I doubt if I would have been able to keep my own.

I wish Rabbi Greenberg had informed his readers of this prominent Rosh Yeshiva's name and that of the Yeshiva he heads. Perhaps he gave the man his word that he would not, in which case he has to keep his word. Perhaps he feels divulging this information would be lashon hara, but here the Jewish public needs to know, since we presumably revere him and relate to him as an authority figure. It should be obvious that we cannot accept the authority of a "leader" who regards suicide as a mitzva. We must make it crystal clear that such a vile man does not utter such abominations in our name. Each one of us should sign the online pledge to speak out against anti-gay harassment and bullying; it might just save a life.

Since the Slifkin affair, the haredi rabbinic leadership has been piling outrage upon outrage and failing us at every turn. It is increasingly difficult to give these people the benefit of the doubt - that they are ignorant, or senile, or prisoners of an old world that no longer exists. It is becoming evident that the Torah world is being led by evil and godless men. Heaven help us all.

Salute to Israel

Last Sunday was the annual Salute to Israel Parade in New York. Jewish students and others marched up Fifth Avenue amid song, dance, floats and general rejoicing. Forgotten for a moment were all Israel's troubles and all the infighting within the Jewish community here, as we came together k'ish ehad b'lev ehad (well, almost) to celebrate Israel's 62nd birthday.











Friends of the Israel Defense Forces



















Israel to the Rescue - Showcasing humanitarian aid provided by Israel to disaster victims the world over

Hang 'em high - The usual traitors from Neturei Karta were there along with their Arab and leftist camp followers.







I have been at this parade in various capacities almost since its inception. While in high school, I marched either with my school or with Bnei Akiva. In the 1970s the parade was arranged by the American Zionist Youth Foundation, and I was among the college and graduate students serving as volunteer marshals. Later on the American Zionist Youth Foundation dropped its sponsorship in a spat over participation by Beth Simchat Torah, New York's gay and lesbian synagogue. That synagogue remains excluded after Orthodox groups threatened to withdraw if Beth Simchat Torah was there, and sponsorship of the parade passed to an ad hoc "Israel Tribute Committee." After decades of amateurism including groups stepping off hours after their scheduled time, the committee last year hired a professional "event organizer," and everything went off without a hitch. This year the Jewish Community Relations Council (JCRC) took over the parade, and again it was professionally run. I kind of miss the spontaneity of its student-run days, but in today's security and budget climate "fashionably late" is no longer viable. I would like to see Beth Simchat Torah somehow included, perhaps among the other Reform synagogues without being identified as gay and lesbian. We Orthodox always marched with all kinds of avaryanim (transgressors) and never "checked tzitzit;" why should gay Jews be an exception?
May we all live and be well, and may next year's parade be even grander.

Tragedy in Haiti - Idiocy in Brooklyn

In an earlier post I stated that Orthodox figures hadn't yet blamed the earthquake in Haiti on our sins. It had to happen and now it did. Rabbi Yehuda Levin, in a video conference and press release carried on the Christian Newswire, stated that homosexuality is partly responsible for the earthquake. Homosexuality here in the U.S.A. mind you, and particularly in the American military, not homosexuality in Haiti, or even voodoo in Haiti. Why homosexuality in America would cause an earthquake in Haiti and kill 200,000 Haitians, while San Francisco, that mecca of sodomites, was spared, he doesn't clue us in. Nor does he tell us that homosexual soldiers serve openly in Israel's military, as they do in many countries all over the world, and Zahal's effectiveness as a fighting force apparently has not been degraded.
Why homosexuality, and not lashon hara, stealing from the government, laxity in kashrut, ad infinitum? Simple. Homosexuality happens to be Yehuda Levin's pet peeve, and has been for some 30 years. He has been spewing vicious, vitriolic hatred of homosexuals for at least that long. Not just hatred of a specific act that the Torah labels toeivah [abomination], as it labels dishonesty in business, but hatred of people. People who to all accounts have little or no control over their sexual proclivities. Even as a candidate for public office, he spewed his vitriol from every soapbox he can stand on, and it is telling that the only soapbox available to him now was of non-Jewish provenance. One wonders how many Haitian-Americans were listening to his rant, or became aware of it later on, and how they reacted to the news that God killed their loved ones to punish others for some real or imagined sins. If I was Haitian I'd be sorely tempted to take a swing at the good rabbi - beard, black hat and all.
Rabbi Levin has a synagogue not far from where I live. He calls it Mevakshei Hashem, Seekers of God. I have news for him; God is not to be found in hatred and bigotry.

Hat Tip: Failed Messiah

I hope it wasn't. . . .

Breaking news from MSNBC (also reported on WINS radio):
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32252124/ns/world_news/

A gunman apparently shot up a support group for gay teenagers in Tel Aviv, killing three and injuring eleven. Details are very sketchy. The police are convinced it was a criminal attack, not a terror attack. An eyewitness says it was a premeditated hate crime, but how would he know the attacker's motives and whether or not it was premeditated? The gunman escaped and is being sought. Other witnesses said the gunman was dressed all in black.

As soon as I heard the report on the radio, which did not mention how the alleged gunman was dressed, I thought to myself, "I hope this wasn't a religious nut." It wouldn't be the first time a religious nut attacked gays in Israel; several years ago there was a stabbing at a gay parade in Jerusalem. Now, who else would be dressed all in black? Please, no, don't let it be. We have enough troubles already.

Stonewall means fight!

For New Yorkers and most Americans of a certain age who aren't living in a cave, the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village represents the struggle of gay Americans for basic human rights other Americans have long taken for granted. It all began 40 years ago in June. Gay Americans, even in a sophisticated and cosmopolitan place like New York City, lived closeted lives of constant fear. They got together in gay bars that were connected with organized crime and were constantly raided by police, who would rough up and arrest patrons. The Stonewall was one such bar, and was routinely raided one evening in late June 1969, only this time it would not be routine. The patrons decided they had had enough. They resisted, sparking three nights of confrontations between young gay men and the police. I'm deliberately not calling them riots, because they were very mild compared to the racial rioting that was tearing American cities apart in the late '60s. One thing led to another, and here we are today.



I recently ran by the Stonewall Inn. For me it represents a piece of my city's history and a piece of Americana. You don't have to be gay to appreciate the universal struggle for human rights. It resonates with me as an American and more so as a Jew because of our history of being denied the most basic human rights in unhappy lands of persecution. When one man's rights are taken away, all men are diminished. I'm not talking about changing the definition of marriage now - though who would have dreamed 40 years ago that we as a country would be debating that today? I'm talking about the right to live anywhere one can afford, to hold a job whose duties one can perform, to be served in a place of public accommodation, and the like. I'm talking about the right not to have to live a lie - whether that means going to the company picnic with a kippa on one's head or with one's gay partner (or both - click here!). Above all, I am talking about the right to walk the streets in safety, without fear of being set upon and beaten because some thugs perceive you, rightly or wrongly, as gay, black, Jewish or whatever. Both gays and Orthodox Jews suffered from a stereotype as sissies (or, to quote R. Meir Kahane hy"d, patsies) who can be physically attacked and beaten with impunity. Many of my friends were beaten on the street growing up identifiably Jewish in the '60s, though praise God that changed in the aftermath of the Six Day War. And it did not change because of the goodness of thugs' hearts. It changed because the Israeli army and air force showed the world another image of the Jew, that of a strong Jew able and willing to stand up for himself. And that is what Stonewall did for gays. One Matthew Shepard is one too many. And the solution for gays is the same as it was for us Jews - an ability and willingness to teach hoodlums a lesson with Jewish or gay fists.

When in the course of Jewish events. . . .

When in the Course of Jewish events it becomes necessary for one group of Jews to dissolve the Torah bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the Jews of earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of us Torah-observant Jews; and such is now the necessity which constrains us to alter our former Systems of Government. The history of the present haredi establishment is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over us Jews. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid Torah world.



They have sought to annul our rights as Western men and women and citizens of democratic countries to read and study what we wish, and to enjoy music and the creative arts, rights inestimable to us and formidable to tyrants only, by banning books and concerts and harassing authors, artists and performers.

They have usurped our parental authority with respect to children in yeshivot by punishing them for dress, conduct and association, including with the opposite sex, off school premises and outside school hours. Our sons, and especially daughters, live in unremitting fear of being followed around and reported on by yeshiva spies.

They have created and nurtured a culture of parasitism, encouraging able-bodied young men to sit in yeshiva indefinitely and live off the labor of others, including elderly parents and in-laws, and forcing on such young men the shame and indignity of accepting assistance that Western enlightened governments provide for those unable to provide for themselves. They have denigrated and devalued secular studies that might give young men the means to earn a livelihood and provide for their families in manly fashion. They have told our daughters in front of their classmates that they are second rate because we, their fathers, work and provide for our families. They have discouraged in their yeshivot all forms of physical exercise that might endow our young men with manly health and vigor, opting instead for sedentary living, unhealthful diet and the resulting chronic weakness and sickness. They have forbidden our young men to fulfill their duty to defend our country against the merciless Arab savages whose known rule of warfare is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions. In sum, they have endeavored to turn the order of nature upside down, extolling the weak, effeminate and parasitical over the strong, upright and manly. To us, Purim comes but once a year.

They have systematically deprived our young of any opportunity to meet in a wholesome environment, resulting in an unprecedented shiddukh crisis.

They have allowed teachers and administrators in their yeshivot to abuse our children sexually in the most heinous and abominable fashion, discouraging victims from reporting these crimes to the lawful constituted authorities and allowing the criminals to continue in employment.

They have led the charge to deprive gay citizens of their basic human rights, rights denied us Jews in the stinkholes of Eastern Europe where they remain culturally rooted. They have embarrassed us all with their gratuitous hatred and bigotry.

They have subordinated the kashrut certification process to their insatiable lust for money and power, having ordered shopkeepers to remove from their shelves products certified by none other than R. Moshe Soloveichik. The Soloveichik name speaks for itself, but those who ordered the removal, causing grievous personal anguish and financial loss to innocent shopkeepers struggling to make a living, wanted their cronies cut in on the action. They have also withheld certification from establishments whose food is kosher, in order to enforce an ambience that meets with their approval but that would make it impossible for such establishments to operate profitably. These and other sordid episodes have fed the public's cynicism with regard to kosher supervision.

They have allowed women seeking gittin to be held up for ransom and blackmail by their husbands, and have accorded those husbands all the honors and privileges due members in good standing of our communities, despite seruvim issued against them by recognized batei din.

They have endeavored, through violence and threats of violence, to reduce our women to slaves and chattel, as they are reduced in benighted Muslim lands but as we, citizens of enlightened Western societies, deem insufferable. Self-appointed "tznius police" set fire to clothing stores whose wares do not meet with their approval. They throw bleach at and otherwise physically attack women walking on public thoroughfares when their dress is not up to the goons' standards. They force women to sit in the back of public buses; those who dare refuse are beaten up and publicly humiliated. Shopkeepers are told to maintain separate hours for male and female patrons, and told that they might end up dead if they don't comply. They have defaced pictures of a female candidate for Prime Minister on lawfully placed campaign posters. These criminals and hoodlums cynically manipulate a corrupt political system to ensure that they are not called to account for their crimes.

They, a bunch of unelected petty tyrants, have sponsored an atmosphere of disrespect and comtempt for duly elected and lawfully constituted secular authorities. By their silence, and sometimes worse, they have made it permissible and even praiseworthy to lie, cheat and steal from the government, as long as they are not caught. They relate to our enlightened governments as if they were the Tsarist tyrants who singled us out for persecution. But they are not bashful about accepting aid from those same governments so they can maintain their parasitic lifestyle.


In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.
Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Jewish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their gedolim to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement in democratic societies. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, to be stood with when they are right and vigorously opposed when they are wrong .

We, therefore, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of our Torah communities, solemnly publish and declare, That these communities are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent agents, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to Agudat Yisrael and its Moatzot Gedolei Torah, in the United States, Israel and throughout the world, and that all religious connection between our communities and said Moatzot and their ideological confreres, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent agents, they have full Power to choose their own authority figures, establish schools for the training of our young as committed Jews and proud citizens of free societies and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent agents may of right do. — And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

We work and they work. . . .

This morning I attended the traditional siyum for firstborn males. We are supposed to fast the day before Pesah in commemmoration of God sparing us when he struck down all Egyptian human and animal firstborn males in the final plague. Attending a siyum, when a tractate of Talmud is finished, and partaking of the se'udat mitzva, the festive meal marking this happy occasion, absolves us of the obligation to fast.
The rabbinic intern at Kingsway Jewish Center in Brooklyn expounded on the final paragraph in Masekhet Megilla, then read the traditional prayer that says in part: We work and they [those who do not study Torah] work; we work and receive a reward, they work and do not receive a reward. We run and they run; we run to eternal life and they run to the pit. . . .

A while ago I stumbled on a gay-oriented sport site featuring a photo they call "Leather Fighter." Brooklyn has its own favorite son, boxer Dmitry Salita, who happens to be an observant Jew. He davens in a Habad shul in the Midwood section. He refuses to fight on Shabbat, forfeiting paydays from popular Friday night fights. As he puts it, "Anyone who wants a whupping from me has to wait till after sundown [on Saturday]."









Dmitry may look like a wimpy Jewish kid, but don't mess with him. His right arm is naturally strong. His left is fortified with tefilin.









Salita pursues an opponent that he has
cornered up against the ropes


We wear black leather and they wear black leather. . . .

Ashreinu.

Homophobia, political correctness and intellectual dishonesty: Answering The Ethicist

The New York Times Magazine's Ethicist published a column about a homophobic slur against a professor by a student in an anonymous course evaluation. I sent the following email in reply:

Having been to college and completed anonymous evaluations of professors, as well as having been evaluated anonymously as a lab instructor, I found your column of January 20 interesting. Columbia University during the 1970s did not have a “speech code,” and I would be very surprised if that has changed since. One of our core values is free and unfettered speech, as we saw when Iranian president Ahmadinejad was invited to campus. The situation you describe, therefore, would not have arisen at Columbia. Because your writer’s college in Georgia (the U.S. state, not the former component of the late unlamented Soviet Union) did not follow your advice, it made the proverbial mountain out of a molehill. The trust between students, professors and administrators, so vital to the academic enterprise, has been shattered. The “guilty” student was required to write a politically correct essay on how his actions can affect the gay community, and to write an insincere, and therefore worthless, letter of apology to the professor. Since the evaluation was not for consumption outside the university, the effect on the outside gay community is minimal if any. The student may very well feel that he did nothing wrong for which an apology is warranted. Since you do not tell us exactly what was written we cannot evaluate the egregiousness of the slur. At any rate, any essay and letter satisfactory to the administrators would be dishonest, and intellectual dishonesty is an academic sin far greater than any putative harm from an anonymous (and therefore cowardly) homophobic slur. The student must then compound the dishonesty by enrolling in a program meant to teach tolerance for what he may consider an abomination not to be tolerated. Perhaps the students should boycott the evaluation process unless and until the punishment is rescinded. Another possible countermove would be to assemble in front of the administration building decked out in T-shirts reading simply, “You shall not lie with a man as with a woman; it is an abomination,” which the administration would probably consider a homophobic slur and not a Divine command, and dare the administration to discipline them all for quoting the Bible!
You advise that in the future the guarantee of anonymity be explicitly limited to comments about the professors’ work and not extending to sexist or racist cracks. However, the line between the two is blurry. Consider the following evaluation of a lab instructor expected to set up the lab before class: Prof. X, being a woman, is too weak to lift the equipment and, being a feminist, is too embarrassed to ask a male student for help, making for awkward situations when that equipment is needed. Or, alternatively: Prof. X lifts the 25-kilogram apparatus as if it weighed nothing. Bull dyke! (The poor lady can’t win! :)) Male chauvinist pigs may not be kosher, but should they be punished for honestly expressing their opinions? We live in a country where the president of Harvard University, no less, was forced out for daring to suggest that there are biological differences between men and women that might affect their aptitude for math and science. I went to school at the height of the Cold War. We were taught that America was the land of the free, and that under Communism there was a party line and woe betide anybody who did not adhere to it. Forty years later, the Cold War is won but American academia has a party line with woeful consequences for anybody who declines to follow it. What is this country coming to?

Zev Stern, Ph.D.
Brooklyn, NY

A gay old time in Jerusalem

Here we go again. Several years ago a gay pride parade was staged in Jerusalem, over the objections of its mostly religious citizens. A haredi goon took it on himself to stab several participants, creating a hillul Hashem but not stopping the parade. Last year, amid threats of violence, the parade was canceled at the last minute and a gathering held at the Teddy Kollek stadium on the outskirts of the city instead. And this year the parade organizers again plan to exhibit their aberrant lifestyle on the streets of the Ir Ha-kodesh and the usual extremists are out with their usual fire and brimstone. Naturally, American Jews must weigh in even though we do not live in Jerusalem (or anywhere in Israel) and will not have to deal with the consequences.
Many of us instinctively want the Israeli authorities to stop the parade, as the lifestyle being trumpeted is (or seems to be) antithetical to Torah, indeed an aveirah for which we are warned that the land will vomit us out, ר''ל. However, the American Constitution as interpreted by many Supreme Court decisions does not allow our government to suppress expression of this sort; if one group gets to parade in the streets then no group can be barred because of the views they intend to express. I would not feel comfortable urging a foreign government to act in a way that our own could not; the same holds for urging European governments to suppress neo-Nazi expression that would be legal in our own country.
What about the threats of violence? These threats cannot be taken lightly, since there was actual violence at previous gay parades in Jerusalem, violence that haredi rabbinic authority condones if not tacitly authorizes with their intemperate rantings. The American courts ruled that the government may constrain people from falsely shouting "Fire" in a crowded theater, but do not take kindly to a "heckler's veto," whereby those opposed to a particular viewpoint can enlist the government to suppress it by themselves creating a threat to public safety. The fact is that New York City has a gay parade every year on the last Sunday in June and so far the sky has not fallen. What then should our response be, in light of a sensitivity to civil liberties that many Israelis, especially religious ones, do not share?

1. The parade should be held as scheduled. Israel, like America, is founded on the rule of law. Indeed, the rule of law is the first of the seven commandments binding on all mankind (sheva mitzvot b'nei Noah). The Israeli Supreme Court has spoken and, as much as we may not approve of its decision, it must govern.

2. The police must protect the safety of marchers, watchers and protesters. This is hardly earth-shattering; New York's Finest do just that for every parade including our own annual Salute to Israel. Anybody who takes it on himself to engage in violence against people with whom they disagree must be promptly arrested and prosecuted.

3. There is a Higher Law than the Israeli (or American) Supreme Court. If religious Jerusalemites feel so strongly that the gay parade offends that Higher Law, they can peacefully protest, up to and including lying down in the street in front of the marchers. If they do that, they must be prepared to "take medicine" without undue complaint, in the spirit of Martin Luther King and his followers, who willingly went to jail for their beliefs. Nonviolent protest of that sort would be a kiddush Hashem, while trashing the city and physically attacking others engenders precisely the opposite.

4. There are laws against public lewdness and they can be enforced at the gay parade as well as in any other public setting. The civil liberties of parade-goers does not extend to displaying private body parts and engaging in sex acts in public.

Finally, we should remember that gay people do not choose their sexual preference, just as heterosexuals do not choose theirs. And we can pray that God will allow scientists to discover the causes of that aberrant (and, from a Darwinian perspective, maladaptive) sex drive and find a way to help those afflicted live normal lives.