Palestine is Desolate

   In this month of mourning for the defeat and murderous persecutions at the hands of the Romans in 135C.E., and of rejoicing for the miracles experienced in our own time, it is instructive to go back 145 years, to Mark Twain’s Innocents Abroad, first published in 1867.  Mark Twain’s book is based on  a tour of Europe and the Middle East that he took with some friends.  These quotes are taken from the Modern Library Edition, New York, 2003: 

Galilee:  (p.358) – There is not a solitary village throughout its whole extent – not for thirty miles in either direction. There are two or three small clusters of Bedouin tents, but not a single permanent habitation.  One may ride ten miles, hereabouts, and not see ten human beings.

Tiberias (p.374) – They say that the long-nosed, lanky, dyspeptic-looking body-snatchers, with the indescribable hats on, and a long curl dangling down in front of each ear, are the old, familiar self-righteous Pharisees we read of in the Scriptures.  Verily, they look it.  Judging merely by their general style, and without other evidence, one might easily suspect that self-righteousness was their specialty. 

Entering Jerusalem (p.418) – Rags, wretchedness, poverty and dirt, those signs and symbols that indicate the presence of Moslem rule more surely than the crescent-flag itself, abound.  Lepers, cripples, the blind, and the idiotic, assail you on every hand. . . .Jerusalem is mournful, and dreary, and lifeless.  I would not desire to live there.

Summarizing (p.456) – Of all the lands there are for dismal scenery, I think Palestine must be the prince.  The hills are barren. . . .The valleys are unsightly deserts fringed with a feeble vegetation that has an expression about it of being sorrowful and despondent.  . . .It is a hopeless, dreary, heart-broken land.. . . .Palestine sits in sackcloth and ashes.  Over it broods the spell of a curse that has withered its fields and fettered its energies.. . .Renowned Jerusalem itself, the stateliest name in history, has lost all its ancient grandeur, and is become a pauper village. . . .Palestine is desolate and unlovely. . . .Palestine is no more of this work-day world.  It is sacred to poetry and tradition – it is dream-land. 

   Tiberias’s self-righteous Pharisees?  Mark Twain is hardly the first Christian author to so egregiously misuse the word “Pharisee,” but that could be the topic of another post.  Dyspeptic-looking?  Well, at least they were not the fat slobs walking around Brooklyn today.  Transplanted to Meah She’arim or Beit Shemesh, they would fit right in with today’s haredim, many of whom are self-righteous and worse.  And these were the only Jews Mark Twain saw there, more’s the pity.  

   If he had traveled 20-30 years later, he would already have seen a different kind of Jew, strong broad-shouldered men (and more than a few women) laboring on the holy land, the land whose productivity Turks and British alike despaired of, but that yielded when watered with holy Jewish sweat.  He saw Palestine, a barren land. as lonely and desolate as Jeremiah describes in Megillat Eicha (the Scroll of Lamentations).  He saw a land that had not enjoyed political independence since 63 B.C.E., a land empty of people, since the much-ballyhooed “Palestinian Arabs” did not come until after 1917, i.e. after Jewish immigrants began to create living conditions conducive to human habitation.  

   If Mark Twain were to wake up today, he would see a modern prosperous independent nation, a Jerusalem steeped in holiness with more Torah learning going on than at any time in its long history, and simultaneously a living, breathing capital of a living, breathing country.  He would see (ro’im et ha-kolot) our ancient language once again on the lips of children, and on the lips of drill sergeants barking out their orders.  He would see the hustle and bustle of Tel-Aviv, and a concentration of brain power that gave the world countless advances in agriculture, high-tech and all fields of human endeavor.  I think he would marvel out loud, as many others have:  Are these people Jews?  Where did these come from?  Who gave birth to them?  (See Isaiah 49:21) 

   Palestine is desolate.  Even today, the areas controlled by the “Palestinian Authority” are barren.  Their people live in poverty and backwardness.  Men kill their own daughters and sisters for “dishonoring the family.”  Their leaders’ corruption and thievery make the worst Israeli and American politicians look like Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm.  Their children are taught not to pursue knowledge but to glorify and emulate suicide bombers, thus passing ignorance and backwardness to the next generation. 

   Palestine is desolate.  But Israel thrives and, please God, will continue to thrive until the unfolding ge’ula reaches its glorious conclusion.

In Memoriam: Rabbi Meir Kahane

Real Torah vs Fake Toyrah

We recently commemmorated the twentieth yahrzeit of Rabbi Meir Kahane hy"d, murdered by an Arab terrorist in New York in the fall of 1990. I came under his influence as a high school student in the 1960s, through his columns in the Jewish Press and his numerous public appearances in Brooklyn. I had enrolled in one of the karate programs that his Jewish Defense League had set up in Brooklyn. One day after class Rabbi Kahane came in and spoke to us. He told us it was high time young Jewish men were doing this, that if we were to survive in our changing neighborhoods rife with anti-Jewish assaults we would have to break the stereotype of the Jewish "patsy" (his word), gentle, scholarly, unaccustomed to (and repelled by) fighting, unable or unwilling to defend himself. This was not news to me. A while before, in 1967, I had begun lifting weights and transforming myself from a sickly little boy into a robust young athlete. I had begun living "muscular Judaism" before becoming aware of the phrase.

Rabbi Kahane taught us that the Torah as studied and lived by generations of Jews in galut (exile) was not the genuine article. I might add that even the typical European pronunciation of the word, Toyrah (as if a yod followed the holam), has an unmanly, kvetchy ring to it. Rabbi Kahane taught us that there is nothing Jewish about being physically weak, unable to stand up for ourselves in the street, and ultimately being herded naked into gas chambers. In fact, it was the essense of hillul Hashem (desecration of God's Name). I am reminded of visiting the Holocaust memorial at Mount Zion in Jerusalem on my first trip to Israel with my family for my Bar Mitzvah. The guide pointed to several bars of soap in the front and told us that they were made from the bodies of Jewish victims and were inscribed with the German initials for "Pure Jewish Fat." It would be laughable if it were not so disgusting and tragic. Since then, all soap, ashes and other derivatives of Jewish bodies at that memorial were properly buried. The Germans discontinued soap manufacture because it was uneconomical, not due to any shortage of Jewish fat. Neither is there any shortage of Jewish fat today; look around in shul and you'll see more pregnant men than pregnant women. Well, nobody is going to get much soap from this (58-yr-old) Jew. The real Torah, according to Rabbi Kahane, presumed normal Jews and a normal Jewish nation. Jews who do not sit all day and half the night hunched over books. Jews who work Jewish soil in the hot Israeli sun. Tough, strong Jews who crush any enemy that dares attack us. The kind of Jews that we meet in Tanakh, the study of which, he taught, is sadly neglected in most yeshivot [but not in my alma mater, Yeshivah of Flatbush].

Cut to 2010. I'm in the bakery shopping for Shabbat and pick up a free copy of the Five Towns Jewish Times. I turn to an article titled "Olympians We're Not" by one "Talmid X," who is spending the now-customary post-high-school year at an Israeli yeshiva. The author describes his physical breakdown caused by sitting for most of the day in a "beis medrash" (Would someone please tell me how a hirik got transformed into a segol?). He tells of how a fifteen-minute stint in the Israeli sun heaving around "enormous sacks of potatoes" had him spending the rest of the afternoon in a bathroom stall suffering from dehydration (and presumably diarrhea). He describes the Israeli summer sun as "boiling", and an "oven. . .set at approximately two million degrees." Well, guess what? I was in that Israeli sun in 1974, when I was roughly his age. I spent the major part of the day not hunched over books but picking grapes in Kibbutz Sde Eliyahu in Emek Bet She'an. I ate like a farm hand because that's what I was, and I did not gain a pound. When I and my friends were not working in the fields we were traipsing all over the country, climbing hills and exploring caves. We traveled in a pickup truck, not an air conditioned bus. We hiked up Masada, the cable car being for weaklings only (when it passed overhead, we called out "too-reest, too-reest"). Talmid X, at best, engages in over-the-top hyperbole that discredits the rest of what he has to say: Just how heavy were those "enormous sacks of potatoes" that broke him in fifteen minutes? At worst, he commits the sin of the meraglim, the spies sent by Moshe Rabbeinu who returned with a report full of lashon hara about Israel. Ovens were the fate of weak Jews before there was an Israel. The Israeli sun is wonderful. It's beautiful. It challenges boys and, if they rise to it, turns them into men. The human organism is designed to function in the heat. Our ancestors made their living running gazelles down to exhaustion in the hot African sun. If 15 minutes in the sun dehydrated Talmid X, then the problem is Talmid X, not the sun. Diarrhea is most likely the result of eating food that was not properly refrigerated, though dehydration can make it worse. At any rate, Imodium works like a charm. Here are a few pointers for managing summer heat.

A Jew is commanded to take care of his/her health and avoid behavior that will make him sick, e.g. smoking and sedentary living. Just as we cannot say that we're too busy learning and have no time to put on tefilin, we can't say that we're too busy learning to keep ourselves healthy. If the yeshiva does not give you time to exercise, then make the time. Even if it means you arrive late for a shi'ur or skip one. Sick Jews learn sick "Toyrah," and dead Jews don't learn any. Get up a bunch of friends and work out together. Your yeshiva probably has a mashgiah ruhani; make yourself the unofficial mashgiah gufani. You might find yourself gaining fresh insights into your learning while you're running around in your underwear; strange and beautiful things happen when your heart's pumping rhythm to your brain. You might even want to carry around one of those voice-activated recorders to record those insights, flesh them out when you get back and surprise whoever is riding you for missing shi'ur. The worst thing that can happen is you'll be kicked out of that yeshiva. So? Find another one, one that teaches the real Torah and not the distorted and corrupt Toyrah.

Hot Fun in the Summertime

Okay fellaz, it's my favorite time of year. SUMMER! And it's a hot one. I'm a hot weather nut; sue me. I'm not walking around in a haze of depression. My body, mind and spirit are open to the sensual pleasures of the season. The simple pleasures that you don't experience in your air conditioned room. The feel of the wind against your chest. The sound of leaves rustling in the breeze. The sight of people in parks and playgrounds, all sizes and colors, having fun. The feel of my chest heaving and muscles pumping on a run, of sunshine on my shoulders, of my body glistening with sweat. The ethereal spiritual experience of davening minha in Prospect Park, dressed in running clothes, surrounded by natural beauty and children at play. Rav Nachman of Bratslav [Bratislava, Slovakia] used to leave town to daven in natural settings; maybe he knew something that today's uptight gedolim don't.



You can't run in Brooklyn without straying out of your immediate neighborhood, in my case Midwood. Go to the north and east (Crown Heights, Prospect Park, Brownsville, East New York) or south (Coney Island) and you see a commodity that is increasingly rare in Midwood - real men. Men who respect themselves enough to take care of themselves. Men who are strong and vital. Men like the one you see here are not at all unusual outside the frum community. They refresh my soul, and provide a needed antidote to the ever-increasing number of poor excuses of men I see in shul, men with fat bellies that resemble those of pregnant women. Call me a Hellenist, but these people offend my esthetic sensibilities and, along with the building being overcooled, sabotage the experience of tefilla. In my peregrinations outside the frum community I see men after my own heart; they enjoy the season and are not above having a little fun. And guess how many times I was physically attacked or threatened by any of them? Zero. Zilch. Zip. Nada. We pass each other and no words need be spoken. A wink, a nod, a gesture communicates the message. We belong to the fraternity of the fit, the brotherhood of real men. We're better than all those weaklings cooped up in their air conditioned rooms letting life pass them by.







And yet I'm surrounded, as I never am in the bleak winter, by people whining and kvetching. Oh, it's soooooo hot. It's boiling. It's gross. And the government chimes in with its "heat advisories." Let the temperature break 90 F and the public health authorities are telling people to stay inside with the air conditioner, don't go out, don't God forbid do anything strenuous. This in a society where more than half of all people, children included, are overweight or obese; I suppose the fat pigs outside the frum community heed these warnings and stay indoors when the weather gets hot. When you're writing heat advisories for the majority in New York, you're writing them for the fat, the weak and the self-pampered. So let me take a stab at writing a heat advisory for strong, fit men - and any females who actually use their bodies instead of merely inhabiting them (I think of them as "honorary men").





1. Stay away from air conditioning as much as possible, except on fast days when you can't drink. In about two weeks you will acclimatize to the heat and actually feel cold in temperatures you consider warm in the winter. Our ancestors made their living chasing down big game on foot in a tropical climate; our genes have not changed much since then. Going in and out of air conditioned surroundings confuses the brain; it doesn't know what temperature regime to adjust to.


2. Hydration, hydration and hydration. You need water, and also salts (sodium and potassium) to replace what you lose in sweat. Carry money on your runs so you can stop in a convenience store and get something to drink. Powerade and now Gatorade are certified by the Orthodox Union.


3. Sweat is not ucky, yucky and gross. It's the precious gift that nature and nature's God gave us to cool our bodies in hot weather. If you're a kohen in the Beit Hamikdash sweat is a bad thing (Ezekiel 44:18); otherwise it's just fine, thank you. Expose as much skin as you dare; the more surface area for sweat to evaporate from, the better. If you should stop sweating during a run, that is cause for concern.


4. Take it easy in high humidity since humid air impedes evaporation of sweat, but don't retire to your room unless you're feeling really bad. Just go slower and shorter.


5. Monitor your body. Pay attention to the color and volume of your urine. Copious amounts of clear or pale yellow urine means you're okay, just keep drinking. Scant and deep yellow urine means you're dehydrated; drink plenty and slow down. Every so often, taste your sweat; just lick a fresh drop from your shoulder or above your lip. If it tastes salty, slow down, have a sports drink and/or eat a salty snack. You might find yourself craving potato chips. If you're on a low salt diet consult your physician, preferably an athletic one. If your sweat does not taste salty- good news! You're acclimatized! A hormone called aldosterone kicked in, and it's keeping the sodium in your blood where it belongs. It's also washing away potassium, so drink some orange juice (o.j. on ice is one of the simple pleasures of the season) and/or eat a banana when you get home. If you're sweating profusely and feeling okay, it's all right to push yourself a little.


6. Use sunscreen but don't obsess over it. When I was a kid suntan lotion had SPF numbers of 4 to 8; anything over 15 was considered overkill. Unless your skin is extremely fair, melanocytes (cells containing dark pigment) will rise to the surface and protect you, but blocking out the sun completely blocks the signal for this response to kick in.


7. If you feel dizzy, lightheaded or cold (!), or you notice that you stopped sweating, do not push yourself. Stop running (or other vigorous activity), seek shade (or air conditioning) and drink lots of fluid. If you don't feel better in a few minutes, seek medical attention. If you do feel better, call it a day and take it easy the next day.


8. When you get home, drink l'chaim on a sports drink and enjoy a cool shower. Let yourself go. Whoop and holler if you feel like it. Revel in the irony. Savor it was you would good wine. You've earned it.


All Jews to the showers!

YEEEEE-HAW!




9. Seek the company of other athletes and avoid that of whiners and kvetches. They just make others as miserable as they are. You deserve to get every last bit of enjoyment out of the summer. It does not last nearly long enough in these parts.

10. Repeat after me: SOFT LIVING NEVER DID ANY MAN OR ANY NATION ANY GOOD!

In Defense of Summer Vacation

We often hear from education "reformers" and tabloid editorial writers that the summer vacation should be abolished. This proposal is usually accompanied by attacks on "lazy teachers" who get summers off when nobody else does. We are told that summer vacation was originally instituted when America was an agrarian society and children were needed on the farm, summer being the busy season for farmers. Now that few children are needed for farm chores, summer vacation outlived its usefulness. I am not sure how true this is; wasn't harvest season in autumn, when kids return to school? But in any event, summer vacation for students and teachers is a venerable American tradition, and that alone argues for keeping it. We Diaspora Jews keep an extra day of Yom Tov, originally because word of the correct date, based on the sighting of the new moon in Jerusalem, might not have reached outlying areas in time. However, we have had a fixed calendar since the fourth century C.E. There is absolutely no doubt of the correct dates of our holidays. We keep the tradition of the extra day simply because it's a tradition; minhag avoteinu b'yadeinu.

Some traditions (and features of a language) originate for one reason and acquire new meanings with the passage of time. For instance, Shavu'ot originated as an agricultural observance, evolved into a commemmoration of the giving of the Torah (zman mattan Torateinu) and is now, praise God, returning to its agricultural roots. Similarly, summer vacation might have originated to free children for farm work, but it took on new utility that more than justifies holding on to it. It is said that two months without learning causes children to forget everything they learned in the previous year. If so, wouldn't kids working on farms have also forgotten their lessons? Does urbanization ruin kids' brains? The sad fact is that children, regardless of where they live or how they spend their free time, tend to forget what they learned as soon as they take the test, unless it is relevant to their lives or of particular interest. I remembered most of what I learned in science, biology in particular, because that is my passion. I fell in love with biology before I fell in love with my wife - or met her. I forgot most of my Shakespeare, except for some quotable quotes (the fault, dear Brutus. . . .). The summer does not cause children to forget what they learned, but it provides an opportunity for learning of a sort that one cannot get in a classroom. Warm temperatures and long hours of daylight enable children (and adults) to recharge their batteries, and acquire habits of physical activity that are absolutely essential for their good health. Playing with friends builds social skills that are not acquired sitting behind a desk but that are necessary for society to function. And children are free to read what they wish, and experience the ethereal joy of learning not because some adult is forcing them to, not because they have to pass a test, but for the pure joy of learning something new. Looking back to my own childhood, most of our parents were struggling and travel was out of the question. But the public library was our home away from home, and we explored the world in books, some of which were borrowed in June, taken to summer camp and returned in September. Summer camp itself was our first experience away from home, and we learned to solve our own problems instead of running to Mommy. You don't get that kind of learning cooped up in a classroom. Most of the summer's seasonal jobs, such as lifeguarding and manning concession stands in parks and beaches, would go begging if not for students off from school. These students are learning that they have to work for the things they want.

Columnists and editorial writers in tabloids begrudge teachers our summers off - and would have children develop sedentary habits that will condemn them to a lifetime of misery. Face it - how productive are you cooped up indoors when the sun and surf beckon? Are you able to concentrate on work when you have to dress in a manner inappropriate for the summer's heat? Instead of abolishing summer vacation for teachers and students, we ought to experiment with prolonged time off for workers in general during nature's time for fun in the sun.

Gam Zu L'Tova - 3

Agriprocessors. The largest kosher beef slaughterhouse and processing plant in the country. Revitalized the economy of moribund Postville, Iowa and became its largest employer. Featured in Jewish Action and other publications. Then suddenly the whole house of cards crumbled. Federal immigration agents raided the place and arrested hundreds of illegal immigrant workers. Allegations of child labor and unsafe working conditions resulting in loss of fingers in some cases. Production crippled due to a shortage of workers. Finally the operation filed for bankruptcy. Retail butchers around the country face severe shortages of meat. Other kosher plants try to take up the slack but lack the production capacity.

Eventually the situation will get back to normal. Either Agriprocessors will successfully reorganize, another kosher producer will buy and operate the plant, or existing kosher suppliers will expand their operations and entrepreneurs will enter the field figuring to make a buck. But until then we will be thinking about where our meat comes from, whether we need to eat so much of it, or any at all, and whether the kosher meat industry as presently constituted is consistent with Jewish ethics.

Agriprocessors, like most American meat processing plants, was based on "factory farming." A factory farm has little to do with the family farms that used to be the backbone of American agriculture or the farming practices described in Tanakh. On a factory farm an animal is a production unit first, and a living, sentient organism a distant second. Male animals are castrated and shot full of female hormones so they could grow faster, but the growth is mostly fat. Cattle, which naturally eat grass, are fed grain instead, again for accelerated growth, but this unnatural diet makes them sick. They are packed into feedlots, wallowing in their own filth, which also makes them sick. The animals are then fed antibiotics to which the infecting pathogens develop resistance, which is transfered to human pathogens. Any number of gastrointestinal outbreaks have been traced to factory farms. It is an understatemet to say that factory farming practices raise issues of tza'ar ba'alei hayyim, unnecessary suffering of sentient animals. It also raises more mundane issues of kashrut. A modern slaughterhouse is an assembly line, where profit is maximized by processing the largest number of animals in the shortest amount of time. Can a shohet pay as much attention to the condition of the knife and the exacting technique of shehita as he could on a family farm where he could take as much time as he needed for each individual shehita? Clandestine video taken at Agriprocessors shows ghastly suffering from what looks to the layperson's eye like massively botched shehita. Granted, the video was taken by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), a group hostile to shehita in general and not especially concerned with ethical treatment of humans if they happen to be Jewish. But pictures don't lie, and living cows writhing in pain with their trachea and esophogi hanging out is inconsistent with Jewish values, if not with halakha.

Now, for the time being, factory-farmed kosher beef will be in short supply. What there is of it will be much more expensive, due both to supply and demand and to the rising cost of animal feed and transportation. Cash-strapped Jewish families will be eating less beef, and that will be to their benefit. Factory-farmed beef is much fatter than what our stone-age ancestors hunted down on foot with primitive weapons, and fatter than livestock raised before the advent of farm machinery. All that fat is unhealthy and a major contributing factor to obesity and its sequelae. In my family we eat beef very rarely; we eat chicken (much leaner than factory-farmed beef) on Shabbat and holidays, and vegetarian fare during the week. Thank God I am a healthy and vigorous 56, at an age when my father's health began to fail, as is that of many of my carnivorous contemporaries.

We are now in a position to insist that our beef be raised sustainably, in a manner consistent with the animals' well-being and our own, fed mostly on grass, with a minimum of fertilizers and pesticides. The operation will be less profitable, and less beef will be produced. What used to be on the menu every day if not twice a day will become a treat for Shabbat and Yom Tov. And we will all be better off for it.

Gam Zu L'Tova (This too is for the good) – 2

Seemingly overnight, we find ourselves in the throes of the worst economic disaster since the Great Depression. AIG, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch – how have the mighty fallen? Foreclosures abound, as do bankruptcies. Gasoline prices through the roof – along with all commodities that depend on gasoline, or jet fuel, to get to us.

I am not directly affected by the price of gasoline since I never owned a car. When you can get to work by train in half an hour, who needs the hassles of a car? As a runner, I do a lot of my getting around on foot, and I see the streets the way automobile drivers do not. And what I see is many more bicycles on the street. A newly sympathetic city administration, goaded by the advocacy group Transportation Alternatives, is painting bicycle lanes on neighborhood streets, despite complaints from automobile drivers. Some of those lanes are even physically separated from automobile traffic. This is a welcome development that augurs well for the health of the city. Unless you live in a cave, you know that we have an "epidemic of obesity." Orthodox Jews seem to have more than their share, and the sight of pregnant men in shul is becoming more and more repulsive as time goes by. I put the phrase in quotes because it is not a true epidemic the way physicians and scientists usually define the word. You don't catch it like the common cold or cancer. Obesity and its dreadful sequelae, hypertension, diabetes and such, is almost always the results of a lifestyle choice. And its not so much that we eat too much, the weight loss industry notwithstanding. The problem is we move too little. Sorry folks, evolution occurred and our species is genetically programmed for a high caloric throughput – eat a lot and burn a lot. Enter all the modern conveniences that make housework easy (sorry ladies – your great-grandmothers had it much harder than you), the automobile, and computers and video games replacing outdoor play, continue to eat the way we're programmed to do, and the equation goes out of balance. Keep at it and you get fat. Stay fat and you get clogged arteries in your penis. Viva Viagra – until the arteries in your heart get clogged and you go on nitrates, or your heart simply can't supply enough oxygen for sex or anything else you enjoy. If you're lucky you can get Type 2 diabetes, go blind and have your legs amputated. And we are seeing Type 2 diabetes, hypertension (high blood pressure) and hyperlipidemia (elevated cholesterol) in children as young as ten. A well-known pediatrician in the Orthodox neighborhood of Borough Park has been known to give patients prescriptions that read "play basketball." But too many yeshivot are indifferent or even hostile to physical activity. Their students are encouraged to sit at a desk all day and get fat - like their teachers. All of us need to move more, and parents should be urging their children to move more. If we really care about our children's health, we will do more than urge. We will refuse to drive our kids to school and let them walk a mile or so instead, or ride a bicycle.

Riding a bicycle to and from work or school goes a long way to restoring the balance. The energy for movement comes from food instead of fossil fuels. You're burning what you're eating, maybe a little more, and the fat comes off and stays off. The economic downturn is making us do what we all should be doing anyway – get around on our own steam. And we will all be happier and healthier for it.