YudelLine

Thursday, December 30

'Tis the Season: Teenage Girls Defend Christmas Honor by Paintballing Jewish Family (Boston Globe)

"Two 15-year-old Duxbury girls have been charged with shooting paintballs at the home of a Jewish family, throwing a rock through their glass door, and leaving a note condemning them for not decorating their house for Christmas."

As has been their habit in recent years, the ADL makes sure to blame the Internet. ''What we are finding is that kids learn behaviors like this at home, on the Internet, on television, and from movies. It is reinforced in school by peers.''

A special YudelPrize (TM) to anyone who finds any evidence of an Internet connection in this case -- or pointers to Web sites advocating paintballing Jewish neighbors.

Ball Fall Down: Now Gary Stern is king of pinball-machine world (Philadelphia Inquirer)

From Williams down to Bally, video has killed all but one. A profile of America's last pinball manufacturer.

Identity Theft: It Could Happen to You (Database Nation by Simson Garfinkel)

"Ultimately, identity theft is flourishing because credit-issuing companies are not being forced to cover the costs of their lax security procedures. The eagerness with which credit companies send out preapproved credit card applications creates the risk of fraud. When the fraud takes place, the credit issuer simply notes that information in the consumer's credit file and moves on; the consumer is left to pick up the pieces and otherwise deal with the cost of a stolen identity."

Tuesday, December 28

Republican Primaries We Would Have Loved to See Dept.

Our hearts were broken this morning, when Mania Buzz reported that JDL Founder Irv Rubin failed to gather enough signatures to run for the Republican nomination for the the seat in Congress currently held by Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Calif.). Ah well. Maybe next year.

"'Word Smart II' is a vocabulary study guide with an emphasis on words frequently found on standardized tests. It is written with an irreverent tone that is meant to be entertaining. The books are distributed by Random House."

Among the problematic vocabulary sentences:

"Don't be boorish," Sue admonished Charles at the prom after he . . . crushed empty beer cans on his head.

Angela couldn't follow the novel's byzantine plot, so she just read the dirty parts.

Nancy finally vanquished her nail-biting habit by coating her nails with a deadly poison.

According to the Bergen Record, the complaining father said he was disgusted by the passages.

He said his son "was just being a good little boy studying for school. Here I am trying to make sure he's not thinking these bad things, and he's reading them out of a book!" he said.

Only 240 years until Y6K and....

Do they know it's Christmas? Ha'aretz investigates what Israeli school children are taught about Jesus. Virtually nothing, as it turns out, but the article would be a bit more solid if they had bothered looking into other countries' curriculum.

Why should anything work on Jan. 1? It's Shabbos! Industry caught between Y2K and Sabbath work permits (Ha'aretz)

"The Labor and Social Affairs Ministry has yet to issue permits for work on Shabbat, January 1, 2000, to large organizations and companies dependent on computerized work - the Knesset science and technology committee was told yesterday at a meeting to discuss the level of preparedness for the Y2K bug."

That Was the Year that Was: PR Blunders of 1999 (Mercury Center)

Reliving the lowpoints of the year, including Microsoft in the court of public opinion, Real Audio spying on us all, Jerry Falwell's war against Telletubbies, and the insurance company brave enough to sue the estate of a little old lady.

Monsanto's Revenge: Monsanto's Expanding Monopolies from Seed to Water (Alliance for Democracy)

There's been a lot of publicity for Mosanto's merger of its pharmaceutical business, and spin-off of its controversial genetic engineering biobusiness. (If you recall, Mosanto is the company that has patented techniques for creating sterile seeds, so farmers become its serfs in perpetuity.) The quiet subtext, that the company would like you to believe, is that the controversial genetic engineering is going away. Unlikely. So this article about Mosanto's move into aquabusiness is still timely, even if it ultimately happens under another corporate name, and something to keep in mind for investors looking for the next monopoly to invest in.

Thursday, December 16, 1999

Talking the Line: The Line of June 4, 1967 (Middle East Insight)

To the west of the international border drawn by Britain and France and 1923, and to the east of the 1949 amistice lines, lies "The Line of June 4, 1967" which, along with security and normalization requirements, is at the center of the public and private Israeli-Syrian talks. The link above takes you to maps; click here to read the historical article from the beginning.

Torah and the Totalitarian Impulse: Yeshiva University vs. the Y.U. Commentator

After a series of ads in The New York Times heralding Y.U.'s multicultural nature, the truth came out this week in the news section: Yeshiva Students Say the University Is Behind Removal of Campus Paper. "Whenever there's a public event, they remove the papers," the Times was told by Aaron M. Klein, the co-editor in chief, who along with his editorial board asked the university for nearly $2,000 in reimbursement for what they said were more than 1,800 copies removed.

The Times story followed a Jonathan Mark column in the Jewish Week last week which noted that "The papers disappeared from the lobbies of YU’s Stern College prior to Stern’s open house for parents and prospective students. The papers disappeared from the Washington Heights campus coinciding with an influx of visitors for lectures by Jesse Jackson and Benjamin Netanyahu. The papers disappeared from alumni mailboxes when YU suddenly ended the practice of subscriptions for lifetime members of the Alumni Association."

The most recently censored issue included an article about the censorship, which quotes a "high level administrator" as admitting "they've been doing this for years. I believe it began when there were articles published about the closing of the Bernard Revel graduate school. Then came the 'gay issue.' It's not surprising that they did it this time either."

Not at all surpising is the conclusion of the Times piece:

"But Dean Nulman said he could not confirm or deny the students' account of what had happened. And the facilities managers were not available for interviews, said Hedy Shulman, Yeshiva's director of media relations.

"By yesterday, however, following a reporter's query, a peace agreement appeared to have been struck. Mr. Klein said the dean had sent a letter saying that the university did not condone removing or disposing of the paper. Along with it came a check for $1,850."

Incidentally, the extent to which even "Modern" Orthodoxy just don't get the idea of freedom of the press and public accountability continues to astound.

About a decade ago, the Rabinical Council of America was on the verge of kicking out Rabbi Avi Weiss, until they began receiving queries from me and other newspaper reporters.

The terrible dilemma of religion in an open society: How to balance one's desire for absolute control with one's desire to seem like an absolutely nice guy.

Rabbi helps Germans ban book: Net bookstore to stop selling Hitler manifesto (News.com)

Maybe this wouldn't bother me so much if I thought that the Wiesenthal Center really believed in the First Amendment, but as the above story indicates, that's not such a strong point among institutions with connections to YU. Maybe if I saw them taking action againt Jewish racists and their Web sites....

"Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Wiesenthal Center, said that while the organization is sensitive to first-amendment concerns, corporations need to be aware of the laws of other countries, especially those of democracies such as Germany. Cooper credited the German government and Bertelsmann for persuading Barnesandnoble.com to stop selling "Mein Kampf" in Germany.

"We asked Barnesandnoble.com not to sell 'Mein Kampf' in a democracy where it is illegal," Cooper said. "We think they made the appropriate decision."

Told you so: Common sense breaks out over Lebanese ban on Intel (Arabia Online)

"The Lebanese Ministry of Finance this morning confirmed to Gilbert Lacroix, general manager, Intel Middle East, that imports were now free to continue and that the Ministry is investigating how the ban ever came into force in the first place."

Wednesday, December 15

How well does ideology pass on to the second generation? After a decade or two of smirking at the collapse of the kibbutz movement, it seems the settlers aren't succeeding much better when it comes to raising youth as ideologically dedicated as the parents.

From the kids interviewed in the article, it seems that sometimes the stress on ideology is in fact backfiring:

""G" and friends explain that the community's social structure attends to their difficulties only when they are perceived as involving issues of religious identity. "There is a youth counselor," "G" says, "but I don't really trust him. Whenever you go to him with a problem, he'll start talking to you about religious matters. You know that his sole intention is to keep you on the Orthodox path."

Orthodox Kids These Days (2): Teen ‘Crisis’ Detailed In Orthodox Brooklyn (Jewish Week)

"The study found that there are 1,500 youngsters ages 11 through 20 who are engaged in serious at-risk behavior.

"This includes: aggression at home and school, property destruction, vandalism, theft, credit card fraud, substance abuse, addiction and dealing, promiscuous sexual activity, running away from home, truancy, suicidal thoughts and the public flouting of societal and communal rules and norms. The youngsters and teens come from the full scope of Orthodox communities, including chasidim and Modern Orthodox.

"The study estimated that another 2,000 young people are doing the same things but have yet to be caught, or are getting into trouble at home and school. In all, Danziger said, 3.75 percent of Orthodox teens in Brooklyn are at-risk, compared with 15-20 percent of students in a Brooklyn public school he surveyed."

Moving on over? Reform to spend $50 million to boost activity in Israel (Ha'aretz)

"Hirsch explained that the special allocation for the former Soviet Union is a "reaction to the discriminatory policy against the Reform movement that has been adopted by the Joint [Distribution Committee]" in the distribution of financial resources to assist Jewish activity in those states.

Hirsch said that nearly all the funds raised by the Joint come from donations by Jews who belong to the non-Orthodox streams of Judaism. "Yet the great majority of the donors' funds goes to underwrite the activity of Orthodox institutions, which exploit some of the funds in order to fight the Reform movement."

"For biting an abusive husband during a domestic dispute, Ms. Flores is to be deported....If Ana Flores were free of the deportation order, for example, and went to Guatemala to visit relatives, she would be asked on her return whether she had ever been convicted of a crime. If she answered honestly, she would be legally inadmissible. And the law gives the Immigration and Naturalization Service no discretion in admission cases."

Sunday, December 12

Mother of us all: Eve: A Biography (Salon)

"Pamela Norris' remarkable new study, "Eve: A Biography," rounds up hundreds of commentators on the biblical first woman, showing that while every culture and every age lends its own flavor to her story, certain themes recur (Eve as sexual temptress, Eve as publicly shamed sinner); and that, what's more, Eve has stood in for all women: Her unfleshed-out actions in the Garden of Eden have been treated as an index of female behavior."

Dirge: The Band's Rick Danko Dead (Excite)

"The rocker's storied career began early. He quit school at age 14 to pursue a musical career and joined Ronnie Hawkins and the Hawks, with many members who would later become the Band, at age 17. He was the group's bassist and backup vocalist.

"After the Hawks split up in the early '60s, Danko--along with Robertson, Helm, Hudson and Manuel--signed up to back Bob Dylan, and became known as simply "The Band." The group's roots-rock blended perfectly with Dylan, leading to the recording of the much-bootlegged classic, The Basement Tapes. (They briefly reteamed with Dylan in the '70s, recording the album Planet Waves.)"

Band Home Page: In memory

Here's an interesting package deal; I'm curious whether the Orthodox powers that be will prove any more accepting of it than they were of the early Ne'eman plan.

The plan addresses the core dilemma posed by Orthodoxy monopoly over Who is a Jew: Can a Russian immigrant convert to Judaism without becoming an Orthodox Jew? In his plan, Rabbi Michael Melchior, minister of Diaspora Affairs, proposes:

• The mass conversion of interested non-Jewish soldiers.
• The mass conversion of children of non-Jewish immigrants before their Bar Mitzvahs.
• Sending all prospective Conservative and Reform converts to the Jewish Agency's "joint" conversion institute established by the Ne'eman Commission, but rejected by the Chief Rabbinate
• the limiting of the "grandchild" clause, to only allow the immigration of non-Jewish grandchildren of a Jewish immigrant if they immigrate with their parents

Whether the official rabbinate goes along, the Haredi community of course will not; that's where computer science comes in to save the day, as explained in this Ha'aretz story Data bank of Jewish geneaologies gets a push.

Already, Jewish Agency Chairman Salai Meridor has rejected the government's plan for solving the conversion problem, objecting to limiting the Law of Return.

Currently, Ha'aretz reports that "From 1996 to 1998 there has been a 150 percent increase in the number of annual conversions, from around 1,000 to 2,500 - impressive, but certainly only a fraction of the potential number." Even this, however, may decrease when The responsibility for the conversion courts and classes will be transferred to the rabbinical courts as of the beginning of 2000.

Or maybe not so impressive, since as Ha'aretz continues (in another article requiring a separate click), fewer than 2500 adult Russians have converted in the past five years, out of roughly a quarter million non-Jewish immigrants.

Saturday, December 11

The story in brief: After 30 years of quietly letting in Intel microchips, a customs inspector suddenly discovered that they're on the Arab Boycott blacklist (presumably because of their billion dollar plants in Israel). And this, as noted by the original Lebanese paper that AP cites, on the eve of Y2K.

No doubt, the ZOA and the usual right-wing suspects will pounce on this as evidence of continuned anti-Israeli intransigence, and on the eve of new peace talks, too!

Do they really believe that?

Yudel's line on this is the exact opposite. On the eve of Syrian talks, the powers that run the press are reminding the Lebanese public just what is at stake in making peace with the Great Satan to the south: Entering the 20th century before it's too late. Somebody running the papers, and playing with some poor customs officer, knows that boycotting Israel is like boycotting the Internet.

You've probably heard of the Torah Codes -- clusters of "equidastant letter sequences" of related words and ideas, popularized by Aish Hatorah's Discovery Seminars as proof of the divine authorship of the Torah and, by a further leap of logic I can't pretend to comprehend, of the divine imprimatur of absolute truth on Orthodox dogma. Here's one about Hanukkah:

Here's how it's explained by Barry Simon, in an article linked below:

"The phrase that anchors the cluster is the ELS for Ner Chanukah (Chanukah candle) which starts from the lower right (last line) and swings up on a diagonal every fourth line. It is a minimal ELS in the entire text from which this picture is a fragment. The other words are all minimal (in the entire text) ELSs of Chanukah related words, for example, Menorah. Chanukah clusters have been a popular topic with codes searchers and none has more words within a short space than this one.

"This example is an impressive cluster that might lead you to suspect that it didn’t occur by chance. However, you should know that it is not a code in the Torah but rather a code in the Hebrew translation of War and Peace."

Ooops!

I first heard about the so-called Torah Codes in college. Someone told me, with some amazement, that 'AIDS' was found near the story of Sodom and Gomorrah. (These are the sort of things that excite Yeshiva College students). I pencilled some quick calculations, based on the the fact that the Hebrew letters for S and D occur with greater frequency in the story of Sodom than elsewhere, and that the Hebrew for A and I are among the top letters, and decided that the random probability was greater than 50%. Not particularly impressive.

Since then, though, the myth seems to have grown and grown. Herewith, a couple of links to some good resources on the topic.

Mathematicians' Statement on the Bible Codes

"The signatories to this letter have themselves examined the evidence and found it entirely unconvincing.

"Among the signatories below are some who believe that the Torah was divinely written. We see no conflict between that belief and the opinion we have expressed above.

"Any text of similar size will have similar clusters of words to those found in the Torah.

"The probabilities quoted for the word clusters are computed by methods contrary to the accepted laws of probability and used in situations where it is essentially impossible to assign meaningful probabilities.

"The famous Rabbis experiment has many flaws in both its data and in its method. The largest flaw, one that, by itself, already entirely explains what was found, is the subjective nature of the list of appellations used for the Rabbis."

Mathematical Miracles in the Qur'an or the Bible?

Thursday, December 9

Universal Truths Dept. How Is the Universe Built? Grain by Grain (NYTimes)

"According to recent developments in the quest to devise a so-called "theory of everything," space is not an infinitely divisible continuum. It is not smooth but granular, and the Planck length (10 to the minus 35 meters) gives the size of its smallest possible grains. "The time it takes for a light beam to zip across this ridiculously tiny distance (about 10 to the minus 43 seconds) is called the Planck time, the shortest possible tick of an imaginary clock. Combine these two ideas and the implication is that space and time have a structure. What is commonly thought of as the featureless void is built from tiny units, or quanta."

Hark the Hatted Rabbi Sings: Yule trees, crucifixes banned in Israel (Spokane Net)

Crucifixes and Christmas trees have been banned from Israeli hotel lobbies during the millennium holiday season because they are offensive to Jews, Israel's chief rabbi said Wednesday.

Israeli Ministry Fights 10th Century Battle: Ancient Jewish Karaite community petitions High Court to restore its religious funding (Ha'aretz)

"In 1976 an interministerial committee decided that the Interior Ministry would fund 60 percent of the community's needs and the Religious Affairs Ministry 40 percent. "The petition claims, however, that the Interior Ministry ceased making its contribution to the community seven years ago."

Wouldn't this do more good in Israel? Jewish group starts anti-hate campaign (Spokane.net)

"Beginning this week, as part of a national campaign against hate crimes, various chapters of the American Jewish Committee are pinning up posters. The posters feature babies of differing races and ethnicities happily rolling around.

The Microsoft threat to U.S. national security: NT scales C2 security heights -- but what about Win2k? (The Register)

"It has also upset Microsoft mightily that Novell had received the superior Red Book C2 security on both the server and the client for NetWare 4.11, which meant that NT Server had no level of certified security. A Novell product manager sniffily described NT security as "an entire disease: they throw a password around the network, so it is available for capture, so it's not surprising that professional hackers are finding holes".

December 8

Keeping Kosher? Vita boycott gives food for thought (Ha'aretz)

Here's the gist of the story: The rabbinical supervisors of the Vita food company are demanding that it fire Eduardo Kampos, a worker who received a government citizenship prize for his work with Ethiopian immigrants but has been the subject of Orthodox ire for being a Jehovah's Witness. The boycott of the Ha'aretz headline is one being threatened by secular leaders if Vita gives in to the pressure and fires Kampos -- a potential power shift, writes Akiva Eldar:

"Up to now, there has been little doubt that a kosher certificate issued by religious figures who contribute nothing of substance to our society carries a lot more practical weight that a certificate of merit granted to a Gentile who has devoted his free hours to helping with the absorption of disabled Ethiopian young people. Since the formation of the state, Israeli manufacturers and businessmen have gotten used to submitting to every Haredi whim.

"If the rabbinical courts demand that video cameras peep into cow sheds to record whether Jews there are milking the animals in violation of Shabbat, the Tnuva dairy cooperative dutifully installs the video cameras. Kosher inspectors in the north claim that there is something amiss with chickens' feet? Poultry farmers dutifully toss 40,000 birds away. The Jerusalem religious council rules that hotels in the holy city ought not to put out Christmas trees to greet millennium pilgrims? Hotel managers bite their tongues and comply. It is profitable to appease the ultra-Orthodox. It's better business to gnash one's teeth but keep one's mouth shut and placate Haredi demands than to be popular with secular Israelis while losing valuable ultra-Orthodox market sectors."

If an American food company were to fire Jewish workers, there would rightly be a hue and cry. But when it's a rabbi mandating the firing, it's kosher; heck, it's employing the gentile that's treif.

I, for one, have been uncomfortable with regarding the OU seal as the defining proof of what's kosher since seeing the OU's chief halachic authority sit by, without comment, when a Brooklyn rabbi put his infamous fatwa on Yitzhak Rabin, z'l.

So the question is, what's a person to do who believes in keeping kosher, but not in the full noxious package of most contemporary Orthodox Judaisms? I don't want my commitment to keeping kosher to be subsidizing the miscellaneous jihads of the supervising rabbis. Any suggestions?

The Proofreader is in the Pudding: Aunt Margaret was kind enough to send us her temple's cookbook for a Chanukah gift. We particularly enjoyed the insert, "Corrections To Cookbook" which include:

p.22 Acorn Squash                Line 3: "Cook" should be "Cool"

p.41 Artichoke & Mushroom Salad  3/4 oz. mushrooms should be 3/4 lb.

p.125 Norwegian Salmon           add: Bake at 350

p.150 Rhum Balls                 title is "Rum Balls"

                                 add ingred: 1/4 c. rum, 3 Tbsp. cocoa

p.183 Vegetarian Chili           Remove "con carne" from title

Ho, Ho, Ho: Federal judge jingles that Christmas holiday is constitutional (Cincinati Enquirer)

"The court will uphold
seemingly contradictory causes
Decreeing “The Establishment” and “Santa”
Both worthwhile Claus(es)."

Some of my* favorite Hanukkah sites Hanukkah, an introduction (Mishpacha.org) "Those who think Hanukkah is the Jewish Christmas have it almost right: Hanukkah is the holiday of being Jewish amidst the Christmas tide." Top 12 Reasons We Like Hanukkah (JCN18) #12: You can't be nailed to the menorah The JCN Hanukkah Carol Competition (JCN18) "You'd best be a Jew Or suffer your fate It does you no good To assimilate Maccabees are coming to town" Spin the Dreidel (Lubavitch Chanukah99.com) *Full disclosure: These are sites that I wrote, edited, coded or comissioned. :-)

December 6, 1999

If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. If all you have is Hanukkah, Purim and Pesach, every head of state looks like Antiochus, Ahasuerus, or Pharaoh. How else to explain Back Pollard clemency, Hillary Clinton urged? (Bergen Record)

"Led by state Assemblyman Dov Hikind, D-Brooklyn, the protesters -- many of them Orthodox Jews wearing yarmulkes -- chanted "Free Pollard now!"

(As an aside, we've come to take it for granted that Orthodox Jews would be leading protests both against the Israeli and American governments. In the 1960s, Orthodox leaders strongly opposed Soviet Jewry protests out of a traditional fear-of-the-consequences line. It seems that Meir Kahane's emulation of Abbie Hoffman and Huey Newton has now been mainstreamed, with the help of Avi Weiss and others.)

Oddly enough, Guliani seems the voice of reason in this story. Maybe it's because he's running against Hillary, but in any case, His Honor the Leader got it right when he said that assuming Pollard "admitted his wrongdoing and is contrite . . . he would be a candidate for pardon or clemency."

Indeed, had Pollard and his earstwhile supporters shut up 15 years ago, he no doubt would have been quietly freed by now. But then, without a victim to point to, how could Dov Hikind and Avi Weiss paint Clinton, Bush, Reagan, Rabin, Peres, Shamir and Begin as Antiochus -- and themselves as the Maccabees?

Rights We Didn't Know We Had: Among the resolutions passed by Agudath Israel over Thanksgiving was one expressing concern "that Israel seems poised to undermine the time-honored right of Jewish men to commit their lives to full-time Torah-study. We urge that this right be safeguarded."

Just curious, but what time (or place) honored this right? Has any place other than modern-day Israel -- and the United States -- actually subsidized such Torah study with mandatory tax payments? How many grown men in Volozhin got paid to sit and learn full time? Has such a "right" ever been vouchsafed to whoever applied for it?

If I were a rich man: Almost every yeshiva bocher is eligible for income support (Ha'aretz)

"Granting minimal income support payments to adult yeshiva students in a manner other than that determined by law, does not meet the principle of equality because such a payment is not given to groups whose position is identical - university students, students at non-Orthodox yeshivas, students at institutions of the Conservative and Reform movements, and students at religious institutions for Christians, Muslims or other faiths."

Obit: Daniel Elazar, 65 (JTA)

"Elazar did not shy away from criticizing Jewish agencies that he believed did not best serve their communities. He said some were more sympathetic to people with money than to people with knowledge, and said a balance between the two was lacking in organizations involved in Jewish politics."

Friday, December 3

Special to YudelLine: Rabbi David Seidenberg reports from Seattle

"We, the Jewish people, have something important to teach about resting, shabbat, shmitta, yovayl; resting from production, asserting ethical responsibility over property, recognizing the dignity and holiness of labor and the sanctity of creation.

"It's easy to get lost in the forest of issues around the WTO. But the ikar, the essence, is that society, production, profit has to rest, to breath, to reflect, to respect what comes first. "

Thursday, December 2

"The sound of a shofar and a rewritten version of a Passover song joined the chorus of protests here this week at the World Trade Organization conference.

:Amid a week that included violent protests and scores of arrests, Rabbi Jim Mirel and cantorial soloist Wendy Marcus helped lead a massive interfaith rally at a downtown church, calling on the United States to forgive the debts of Third World nations. "

Tikkun WTO (1) Rebels In Search of Rules (Naomi Klein in NYT OpEd)

"When protesters shout about the evils of globalization, most are not calling for a return to narrow nationalism, but for the borders of globalization to be expanded, for trade to be linked to democratic reform, higher wages, labor rights and environmental protections."

Tikkun WTO (2) Messages for the W.T.O. (NYTimes Editorial)

"Protest leaders were right to condemn the lawlessness quickly. But the W.T.O.'s 135 members will make a huge mistake if they fail to grasp the core belief fueling these unruly protests -- that the W.T.O. is far too insular, that it has displayed too little sensitivity for issues like workers' rights and the environment, and that its secretive procedures undermine public trust."

Dino! First nearly complete juvenile T. rex skeleton found

[YudelLine Home] [Archive Home]

What do you think? (C) 1999-2001 Larry Yudelson. Web design by YudelCom Communications